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The use of additives as a sintering aid for promoting densification is well-known in processing structural ceramics. In leaky ferroelectric ceramics (e.g., BiFeO 3 -based systems), additives are also used to reduce the leakage current, improve the poling efficiency and the piezoelectric response of a material. A less investigated aspect is how additives affect the multiferroic (ferroelectric and magnetic) features of BiFeO 3 -based ceramics. In this work, we report a systematic study of the effect of different additives viz, MnO 2 , CuO, K 2 CO 3 and KMnO 4 on the microstructural, electromechanical, and magnetic properties of Dy-modified BiFeO 3 –PbTiO 3. We found that all the additives help in the precipitation of the ferrimagnetic dysprosium iron garnet phase. The additives containing potassium (K) tend to suppress the grain size. We found that the best combination of ferroelectric and ferromagnetic behaviour was found in a mixture of additives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report here the synthesis of a self-grown 0–3 particulate multiferroic composite by controlled precipitation of the ferrimagnetic garnet phase using additive (MnO2) assisted sintering of a multi-cation ferroelectric system (Bi, Pb, Dy)(Fe, Ti)O3. The particulate multiferroic composite derived in this manner exhibits a favorable microstructure, wherein, although the volume fraction of the garnet phase is kept low (6%), which helps in retaining the electrical insulating character of the specimen, the number fraction of the garnet grains vis-à-vis the ferroelectric grains is ∼1:1. The composite shows a nearly ∼50% increase in saturation polarization at room temperature under a modest magnetic field of 1 T, suggesting a considerable improvement in ferroelectric domain switching due to the efficient strain transfer from the minority garnet grains to the majority piezoelectric grains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]