Additives effect on the multiferroic behaviour of BiFeO3–PbTiO3.

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]