Rationally designing bifunctional electrocatalysts of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) with high activity and long term stability remains to be a big challenge. Herein, we report...

As potential single-phase multiferroic materials, Aurivillius compounds have attracted much interest in recent years. In this paper, Bi 5 Fe 0.9 Co 0.1 Ti 3 O 15 (BFCTO) nanosheets were first synthesized by a hydrothermal method; lateral length and thickness of them are ∼600 nm and ∼100 nm, respectively. The BFCTO nanosheets were assumed to form by a co-effect of the aggregate process, the oriented attachment of neighboring nanorods, and Ostwald ripening. Besides, an obvious hysteresis loop with 2M r = ∼0.55 emu g −1 and 2H c = ∼2600 Oe at 300 K was observed in the final products. Both dielectric permittivity and dielectric loss decrease with the increase of the frequency at room temperature. Our results could serve as guidance to realize a controllable synthesis of Aurivillius nanoparticles and will shed light on designing new nanodevices.

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In recent years, much attention has been paid to layer-structured BiBiFeMTiO (BFMTO, M = Co, Mn) compounds due to their potential as high temperature single phase multiferroic materials. However, BFMTO single crystals have been rarely reported in the past, though they are better candidates for studying the corresponding intrinsic multiferroics as well as the platform for making future devices, due to their structural complexity and difficulties in fabrication. In this article, BiFeCoTiO single-crystalline nanoplates were synthesized by the hydrothermal method. The ferromagnetic domain structure of the nanoplate was investigated by electron holography. Denser phase contours were observed and the closed magnetic flux lines indicated a significant magnetic interaction between the neighboring nanoplates, which proved the ferromagnetic nature of the sample. Furthermore, M-H loops of the sample were also measured, in which the ferromagnetic Curie temperature reached ∼730.2 K. Besides, ferroelectric domains were also detected by using a piezoresponse force microscope. All the above-mentioned results indicate the first verification of the room temperature (RT) multiferroic behaviour in such single crystals, which will be useful for both future devices and understanding the underlining physics.