Investigations on structural, ferroic and magneto-dielectric properties of multiferroic Bi_0.9Sm_0.1FeO₃ and its composite (0.9) Bi_0.9Sm_0.1FeO₃/(0.1) La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ at room temperature

Magnetoelectric multiferroic materials have attracted great attention due to their applicability in multifunctional low power consuming devices. We report structural, ferroelectric, ferromagnetic and magneto dielectric properties of multiferroic Bi_0.9Sm_0.1FeO₃ (BSFO) and its composite (0.9) Bi_0.9Sm_0.1FeO₃/(0.1) La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ (BSFO 10) ceramics synthesized via solid-state reaction route. The X-ray diffraction patterns of the samples were analyzed by Rietveld refinement for the affirmation of crystal structure, lattice parameters, strain, etc. The polarization versus electric field (P–E) loops, observed for BSFO shows maximum polarization value of 1.9μC/cm² and it increases to 3.83μC/cm² in composite BSFO 10. The magnetization versus field study (M–H) shows that the saturation magnetization enhances from 0.13 to 5.61 emu/g on the addition of La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ (LSMO) in BSFO. Magneto dielectric (MD) analysis reveals 3.83% MD effect in BSFO and 0.26% in BSFO10 at 1 kHz frequency. Interestingly at higher frequency (1 MHz), the MD effect observed for BSFO and BSFO 10 are 0.28% and 0.39% respectively. The magneto electric interaction observed through MD effect by analyzing the thermodynamic equation reveals the existence of room temperature magneto electric coupling in both samples.