Growth and characterization of BiFeO3 film for novel device applications

Among multiferroic materials, BiFeO3 (BFO) is much attractive owing to its high Curie temperature (T-c ) and Neel temperature (T N ), which presents opportunities for potential device applications at room temperature. Single phase and epitaxial BFO thin films were deposited on SrRuO3/SrTiO3 substrates by pulsed-laser deposition method. BFO film showed the remnant polarization of as large as 45 mu C/cm(2) and strong immunity for the fatigue cycles up to 10(9) . In addition, the antiferromagnetic nature of BFO film was confirmed by clear appearance of exchange bias of 50 Oe in spin valve system. And, based on the observed multiferroic properties of BFO film, we proposed a novel multi-bit memory cell.