Structural and Ferroic Properties of Zr-doped BiFeO3Thin Films

Polycrystalline Zr-doped BiFeO 3 thin films were prepared by a sol-gel spin-coating technique on (111) Pt/Ti/SiO 2 /Si substrates. The films are of single phase as evidenced by X-ray diffraction, and microstructure characterization on the surface and cross-section morphology of the films was carried out by scanning electron microscope. By introducing a small amount of Zr ions into the sol-gel solution-processed BiFeO 3 films, the leakage current density is reduced by three orders of magnitude compared with the undoped BiFeO 3 films, and the conduction mechanism in the BiFeO 3 -based films was studied. Both the films exhibit weak ferromagnetism of 25 emu/cm3 at room temperature.