Magnetic and Electric Properties of Multiferroic Ni-doped BiFeO₃

Multiferroic materials have attracted much attention due to their own fascinating fundamental physical properties and potential technological applications to magnetic/ferroelectric data storage systems, quantum electromagnets, spintronics, and sensor devices. Among single-phase multiferroic materials, $BiFeO_3$, in particular, has received considerable attention because the enhanced ferromagnetism was found by the Fe-site ion substitution with magnetic ions. The structural, the magnetic and the ferroelectric properties of polycrystalline $BiFe_{1-x}Ni_xO_3$ (x=0, 0.01, 0.02, 0.03 and 0.05), which were prepared by the solid-state reaction and the rapid-sintering method, have been investigated. The x-ray diffraction patterns reveal that all the samples are in single phase and show rhombohedral structure with R3c space group. The magnetic properties are enhanced according to the doping content. The Ni-doped $BiFeO_3$ samples exhibit lossy P-E loop due to the oxygen vacancy. The leakage current density of Ni-doped samples (x=0.01 and 0.02) is increased by four orders of magnitude. On the other hand, the x=0.03 and 0.05 samples show the relative reduction of the leakage current.