Effect of rhombohedral to orthorhombic transition on magnetic and dielectric properties of La and Ti co-substituted BiFeO3

Polycrystalline Bi1-xLaxFe1-xTixO3 (x = 0.000-0.250) ceramics were synthesized by the tartaric acid modified sol-gel technique. It was observed that the co-substitution of La and Ti at Bi and Fe sites in BiFeO3 suppresses the impurity phase formation which is a common problem in the bismuth ferrite ceramics. The quantitative crystallographic phase analysis of x-ray diffraction pattern by employing Rietveld technique was performed with the help of FULLPROF program which suggests the existence of compositional driven crystal structure transition from rhombohedral (space group R3c) to the orthorhombic (space group Pbnm) symmetry. The oxygen octahedral tilt angle was found to be similar to 13.82 degrees for BiFeO3 (space group R3c) and decreases with the increase in co-substitution percentage. The structural transition breaks the spin cycloid structure in co-substituted BiFeO3 nanocrystallites and leads to canting of the antiferromagnetic spin structure. Hence, the remnant magnetization increases up to 10% of co-substitution and becomes 22 times that of BiFeO3. However, it decreases for higher cosubstitution percentage due to significant contribution from the collinear antiferromagnetic ordering in the orthorhombic crystal symmetry. The dielectric constant attains a maximum for 10% of co-substitution.