Effect of In and Mn co-doping on structural, magnetic and dielectric properties of BiFeO 3 nanoparticles

Bi1−xInxFe1−yMnyO3 (x = 0, y = 0; x = 0.1 y = 0; x = 0, y = 0.1; x = 0.05, y = 0.05) nanoparticles were prepared by a simple cost effective ethylene glycol based solution combustion route. The XRD analysis reveals the single phase rhombohedral structure for BiFeO3 (BFO) and In and Mn co-doped BFO (BIFMO) samples. Some structural distortion is observed for the In and Mn co-doped samples. The co-doping of In and Mn at A-B-site of BFO improves the particles’ surface morphology and reduces the average grain size to around 15nm which evidently affects the magnetic and electrical properties of these nanoparticles. The saturation magnetization enhances significantly from 0.20emug −1 for BFO to 3.50emug −1 for the co-doped sample. The enhanced saturation magnetization is attributed to the size effect. The co-doping decreases the coercivity to around 32Oe due to a decrease in the magneticrystalline anisotropy. The co-doping improves the dielectric constant and dielectric loss and results in the modification of dielectric behaviour with varying temperatures up to 250 ◦ C. All doped samples show high resistivity of the order of 10 9 � cm which further improves with co-substitution of In and Mn and is attributed to the presence of small grain size and reduction of oxygen ion vacancies. (Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)