Investigation on electrical and magnetic properties of BiFeO₃–SmFeO₃ solid solution

Perovskite ceramic-composites have significant importance in the field of high-performance energy storage device (HPESD) applications due to the high breakdown strength and good flexibility of polymer and high dielectric and ferroelectric properties of ceramics. Perovskite ceramic-composites of BiFeO₃–SmFeO₃ (BFO–SFO) were synthesized using a solid-state reaction method performed at high-temperature to create polycrystalline samples of rare-earth ferrite-modified bismuth ferrite (i.e., (BiFeO₃)1-x + (SmFeO₃)x with x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3). Powder X-Ray diffraction (PXRD) technique was used in the preliminary structural analysis of calcined powders of the materials, and formation of single-phase system and existence of mixed crystallographic phases was validated. Surface morphologies of ceramic composite powders were investigated using an ambient temperature scanning electron microscopy picture of the samples, which indicated a uniform distribution of low porosity grains with varying sizes on the surface of the samples. Using a complex impedance spectroscopy technique, detailed studies of impedance, electrical modulus and dielectric responses of the materials have been reported for a wide range of frequencies (1kHz–5MHz) with a range of temperature variation (30–500 °C), were reported. In the magnetic properties, the exchange bias effects are shown for these samples.