Low temperature hydrothermal epitaxy and Raman study of heteroepitaxial BiFeO3 film

Abstract

By hydrothermal epitaxy, a heteroepitaxial BiFeO3 (BFO) film of similar to 2.5 mu m thickness was grown on a (100)-oriented single-crystalline SrTiO3 (STO) substrate at 200 degrees C, which is at least 250 degrees C lower than the conventional techniques used thus far. The x-ray diffraction pattern indicated the formation of a single-phase perovskite structure that was highly oriented along the (001) lattice plane. Pole-figure and Phi-scan results confirmed the cube-on-cube epitaxial relationship of BFO parallel to STO. The Raman active vibrational modes showed anomalous changes in the vicinity of the Neel temperature (T-N), which was attributed to spin-phonon coupling. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3237160]