Study of Multiferroic Properties of Bismuth Based Metal Oxide Nanostructured Materials

Abstract

Bismuth based metal oxide multiferroic materials having perovskite and related structures have been extensively studied exploring their fundamental and technological aspects. The lead-free and environment-friendly multiferroic material, bismuth ferrite, has grabbed remarkable attention from researchers in the last decade, as it possess ferromagnetic and ferroelectric order at the room temperature. Mullite phase of bismuth ferrite Bi2Fe4O9 has emerged as other multiferroic bismuth based oxide showing interesting properties in the field of gas sensing, catalyst for nitric oxide industry and potential photocatalyst to degrade dyes in UV and visible range. newlineIn this thesis, a family of bismuth ferrites, including pure bismuth ferrite BiFeO3 (BFO), Strontium doped bismuth ferrite (BSFO) and Mullite bismuth ferrite Bi2Fe4O9 (Mullite BFO) have been synthesized using combustion synthesis (CS) and systematically explored. Their structural, morphological, multiferroic, optical and electrical properties are studied in detail. An attempt has been made to correlate the structural and the morphological properties with multiferroic, optical and electrical behavior of bismuth based metal oxide multiferroic materials. The work presented in the thesis has been divided into various chapters as given below. newline