Multiferroic materials have driven significant research interest due to their promising technological potential. Developing new room-temperature multiferroics and understanding their fundamental properties are important to reveal unanticipated physical phenomena and potential applications. Here, a new room temperature multiferroic nanocomposite comprised of an ordered ferrimagnetic spinel LiFe5O8 (LFO) and a ferroelectric perovskite BiFeO3 (BFO) is presented. We observed that lithium (Li)-doping in BFO favors the formation of LFO spinel as a secondary phase during the synthesis of LixBi1-xFeO3 nanoceramics. Multimodal functional and chemical imaging methods are used to map the relationship between doping-induced phase separation and local ferroic properties in both the BFO-LFO composite ceramics and self-assembled nanocomposite thin films. The energetics of phase separation in Li doped BFO and the formation of BFO-LFO composites is supported by first principles calculations. These findings shed light on Li-ion role in the formation of a functionally important room temperature multiferroic and open a new approach in the synthesis of light element doped nanocomposites.
@article{arxiv.1908.04825,
title = {Self-Assembled Room Temperature Multiferroic BiFeO3-LiFe5O8 Nanocomposites},
author = {Yogesh Sharma and Radhe Agarwal and Liam Collins and Qiang Zheng and Anton V. Ivelev and Raphael P. Hermann and Valentino R. Cooper and Santosh KC and Ilia N. Ivanov and Ram S. Katiyar and Sergei V. Kalinin and Ho Nyung Lee and Seungbum Hong and Thomas Z. Ward},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.04825},
year = {2019}
}