Chemistry of the Fe₂O₃/BiFeO₃ Interface in BiFeO₃ Thin Film Heterostructures

Miryam Arredondo; Quentin M Ramasse; Kashinath Bogle; Valanoor Nagarajan

doi:10.3390/ma3125274

Chemistry of the Fe₂O₃/BiFeO₃ Interface in BiFeO₃ Thin Film Heterostructures

Materials (Basel). 2010 Dec 14;3(12):5274-5282. doi: 10.3390/ma3125274.

Authors

Miryam Arredondo¹, Quentin M Ramasse², Kashinath Bogle³, Valanoor Nagarajan⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. arredond@mpi-halle.mpg.de.
² SuperSTEM Laboratory, STFC Daresbury, Keckwick Lane, Daresbury WA4 4AD, UK. qmramasse@superstem.org.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. kashinath.bogle@unsw.edu.au.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia. nagarajan@unsw.edu.au.

Abstract

We investigate the interfacial chemistry of secondary Fe₂O₃ phases formed in a BiFeO₃ (BFO) layer in BFO/ La_0.67Sr_0.33MnO₃ (LSMO)/SrTiO₃ (STO) heterostructures. A combination of high-resolution spherical aberration corrected scanning TEM and spectroscopy results, reveals that specific chemical and crystallographic similarities between Fe₂O₃ and BFO, enable the BFO layer to form a facile host for Fe₂O₃.

Keywords: EELS; Z-contrast imaging; mutliferroic BiFeO3; perovskite.