Magnetoelectric and multiferroic properties of BaTiO3/NiFe2O4/BaTiO3 heterostructured thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition technique

Abstract

Development of lead-free BaTiO3/NiFe2O4/BaTiO3 (BTO/NFO/BTO) trilayer structure thin films is significant for the realization of eco-friendly and implantable microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based devices. In the present work, we report BTO/NFO/BTO trilayer structure as a representative ferroelectric/ferromagnetic/ferroelectric (FE/FM/FE) system deposited on Pt(111)/TiO2/SiO2/Si using Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) technique. We report the ferroelectric, magnetic, and ME properties of BTO/NFO/BTO trilayer nanoscale heterostructure having dimensions 140/80/140 nm, at room temperature. High room temperature dielectric constant ~2145 at 100 Hz with low dielectric loss ~0.05 at 1 MHz is observed. Further, the deposited (BTO/NFO/BTO) tri-layered thin films showed magnetoelectric, multiferroic behavior with remanent polarization of 8.63 µCcm−2 at about 0.25 MV/cm and a reasonably high saturation magnetization of ~16 emu/cm3 at ~10 kOe is witnessed at room temperature. Tri-layered films have shown interesting magnetoelectric (ME) coupling coefficient (αE) ~54.5 mV/cm Oe at room temperature.