Investigation of electronic, ferroelectric and local electrical conduction behavior of RF sputtered BiFeO3thin films

Shahzad Hussain; Saif Ullah Awan; Arif Mumtaz; Resham Siddique; Muhammad Aftab; S K Hasanain

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ad3fc6

Investigation of electronic, ferroelectric and local electrical conduction behavior of RF sputtered BiFeO₃thin films

Nanotechnology. 2024 May 1;35(29). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ad3fc6.

Authors

Shahzad Hussain^{1

2}, Saif Ullah Awan³, Arif Mumtaz², Resham Siddique¹, Muhammad Aftab^{2

4}, S K Hasanain²

Affiliations

¹ Magnetism Lab, Department of physics, COMSATS University, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
² Department of Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering, NUST College of Electrical & Mechanical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Campus H-12, 44000 Islamabad, Pakistan.
⁴ Department of Physics, Government Postgraduate College No. 1 Abbottabad, Pakistan.

PMID: 38631335
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ad3fc6

Abstract

Most of the applied research on BiFeO₃(BFO) focuses on magnetoelectric and spintronic applications. This calls for a detailed grasp of multiferroic and conduction properties. BFO thin films with (100) epitaxial growth has been deposited on a LaNiO₃(LNO) buffered Pt/Ti/SiO₂/Si(100) substrate using RF magnetron sputtering. The film formed at 15 mTorr, 570 °C, and with Ar/O₂4:1 had a reasonably high degree of (100)-preferential orientation, the least surface roughness, and a densely packed structure. We obtained ferroelectric loops with strong polarization (150μC cm^-2). The leakage current density is as low as 10^-2A cm^-2at 100 kV cm^-1, implying that space-charge-limited bulk conduction (SCLC) was the primary conduction channel for carriers within BFO films. Local electrical conduction behavior demonstrates that at lower voltages, the grain boundary dominates electrical conduction and is linked to the displacement of oxygen vacancies in the grain boundary under external electric fields. We hope that a deeper understanding of the conduction mechanism will help integrate BFO into viable technologies.

Keywords: conduction properties; electronic properties; ferroelectric; multiferroics; thin films.