Low temperature magnetic properties of BiFeO3 powders sintered by flash and spark plasma sintering were studied. An anomaly observed in the magnetic measurements at 250 K proves the clear existence of a phase transition. This transformation, which becomes less well-defined as the grain sizes are reduced to nanometer scale, was described with regard to a magneto-elastic coupling. Furthermore, the samples exhibited enhanced ferromagnetic properties as compared with those of a pellet prepared by the conventional solid-state technique, with both a higher coercivity field and remnant magnetization, reaching a maximum value of 1.17 kOe and 8.5 10-3 emu/g, respectively, for the specimen sintered by flash sintering, which possesses the smallest grains. The specimens also show more significant exchange bias, from 22 to 177 Oe for the specimen prepared by the solid-state method and flash sintering technique, respectively. The observed increase in this parameter is explained in terms of a stronger exchange interaction between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic grains in the case of the pellet sintered by flash sintering.
Keywords: bismuth ferrite; flash sintering; magnetic properties; mechanosynthesis; spark plasma sintering.