Effect of Ni dopant on the multiferroicity of BiFeO₃ ceramic

Multiferroic materials are of great interest because of its potential applications in the design of devices combining magnetic, electronic and optical functionalities. Among various multiferroic materials, $BiFeO_3$(BFO) is known to be one of the intensively focused mainly due to the possibility of multiferroism at device working temperature (> $200^{\circ}C$). However, leakage current and weak polarization resulting from oxygen deficiency and crystalline defect should be resolved. Furthermore the magnetic ordering of pure BFO mainly prefers to have antiferromagnetic coupling. Up to now many attempts have been performed to improve the ferromagnetic and the ferroelectric properties of BFO by doping. In this work, we investigated the effects of Ni substitution on the multiferroism of bulk BFO. Four BFO samples (a pure BFO and three Ni-doped BFO's; $BiFe_{0.99}Ni_{0.01}O_3$, $BiFe_{0.98}Ni_{0.02}O_3$ and $BiFe_{0.97}Ni_{0.03}O_3$) were synthesized by the standard solid-state reaction and rapid sintering technique. The XRD results reveal that Ni atoms are substituted into Fe-sites and give rise to phase transition of cubic to rhombohedal. By using vibrating sample magnetometer and standard ferroelectric tester, the multiferroic properties at room temperature were characterized. We found that the magnetic moment of Ni-doped BFO turned out to be maximized for 3% of Ni dopant.