Analysis of interphase magnetoelectric coupling in Bi0.9La0.1FeO3–MgFe2O4 composites

Abstract

Multiferroic materials have grabbed great attention of researchers due to their distinctive feature of magnetoelectric coupling with vast applicability in advanced multifunctional devices. To achieve considerable value of magnetoelectric coupling, the samples of La-doped BiFeO3 and MgFe2O4, which were initially synthesized via hydrothermal method, were then embedded into the (1–x)Bi0.9La0.1FeO3 + xMgFe2O4 composites using a ball-milling process. The presence of rhombohedrally distorted cubic perovskite structure of La-doped BiFeO3 having R3c space group symmetry and spinel cubic structure of MgFe2O4 with Fd-3m space group symmetry was confirmed using X-ray diffraction analysis. The microscopic images of the composite samples show a slight variation in grain size with least porosity observed for the composite of x = 0.5. The elemental mapping assured the presence of all elements in the prepared composites that were in accordance with the stoichiometric ratios. The ferroelectric analysis exposed that the x = 0.2 composition had shown the highest efficiency of 52% for energy storage devices. The linear magnetoelectric response of the composite samples along with small values of switching charge density observed at x = 0.3 inferred this particular composite quite preferable for data storage applications.