2007/01/22 by H. Béa, H. Bea, M. Bibes +4 · 5 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Antiferromagnetism #Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials #Magnetism #Magneto-Optical Properties and Applications #Monoclinic crystal system #Multiferroics and related materials #Neutron diffraction #Neutron reflectometry #Raman spectroscopy #Reciprocal lattice #Tetragonal crystal system #Thin film #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09500830701235802
To appear in Philos. Mag. Lett. In particular, we provide a direct evidence for the spin-cycloid destruction in a BiFeO3 thin film
arxiv created 2007/01/22 · openalex publication_date 2007/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A previous study of the growth conditions has shown that single-phase BiFeO3 thin films can only be obtained in a narrow pressure–temperature window and that these films display a weak magnetic moment. Here, we study in more detail the structure and the magnetism of single-phase BiFeO3 films by means of reciprocal space mapping, Raman spectroscopy and neutron diffraction. X-ray and Raman data suggest that the BiFeO3 structure is tetragonal for 70 nm thick films and changes to monoclinic for 240 nm thick films, thus remaining different from that of the bulk (rhombohedral) structure. In the 240 nm monoclinically distorted film, neutron diffraction experiments allow the observation of a G-type antiferromagnetic order as in bulk single crystals. However, the satellite peaks associated with the long-wavelength cycloid present in bulk BiFeO3 are not observed. The relevance of these findings for the exploitation of the magnetoelectric properties of BiFeO3 is discussed.