Photoresponse of high quality epitaxial BiFeO3 films grown through hydrothermal method and rapid microwave assisted method

High quality BiFeO 3 film with enhanced remanent polarization and magnetization attracts much interest for its great application potential in information storage and photoelectric devices. Here we grew single-crystal epitaxial BiFeO 3 film on SrTiO 3 substrate through hydrothermal method at low temperature, the film has a quality higher than any reported BiFeO 3 films grown through hydrothermal method. Furthermore, BiFeO 3 film was grown through a 25 min rapid microwave-assisted hydrothermal process. The two BiFeO 3 films exhibited obvious light response to periodically switching on and off of a LED light, and the film grown through microwave-assisted hydrothermal method produced a 4.7V open-circuit voltage exceeding the band gap of BiFeO 3 originating from the ferroelectric photovoltaic effect. These results demonstrate that hydrothermal and microwave-assisted hydrothermal method are simple, inexpensive and rapid to grow high quality epitaxial BiFeO 3 film with potential application in photoelectric detection and photovoltaic.