Role of oxygen vacancy and Fe-O-Fe bond angle in compositional, magnetic, and dielectric relaxation on Eu-substituted BiFeO<inf>3</inf> nanoparticles

The influence of oxygen vacancies on the dielectric relaxation behavior of pure and Eu-substituted BiFeO3 nanoparticles synthesized by a sol-gel technique has been studied using impedance spectroscopy in the temperature range of 90 °C to 180 °C. The electric relaxation time and activation energy of the oxygen vacancies can be calculated from the Arrhenius equation, and found to be 1.26 eV and 1.76 eV for pure and Eu-substituted BiFeO 3, respectively. Substitution induces structural disorder and changes in the Fe-O-Fe bond angle, leading to alteration of the magnetic properties, observed from magnetic studies and evaluated using Rietveld refinement of the XRD patterns. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirms the shifting of the binding energy of the Bi 4f orbital, establishing Eu substitution at the Bi site. Calculation of the area under the Fe2+/Fe3+ (2p) and O (1s) XPS spectra gives approximate values of the oxygen vacancies. © 2014 the Partner Organisations.