A remarkably high saturation magnetization of ~0.4mu_B/Fe along with room temperature ferromagnetic hysteresis loop has been observed in nanoscale (4-40 nm) multiferroic BiFeO_3 which in bulk form exhibits weak magnetization (~0.02mu_B/Fe) and an antiferromagnetic order. The magnetic hysteresis loops, however, exhibit exchange bias as well as vertical asymmetry which could be because of spin pinning at the boundaries between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic domains. Interestingly, like in bulk BiFeO_3, both the calorimetric and dielectric permittivity data in nanoscale BiFeO_3 exhibit characteristic features at the magnetic transition point. These features establish formation of a true ferromagnetic-ferroelectric system with a coupling between the respective order parameters in nanoscale BiFeO_3.Comment: 13 pages including 4 figures; pdf only; submitted to Appl. Phys. Let

We report results of a comprehensive study of the phase transition at T N (~643 K) as a function of particle size in multiferroic BiFeO 3 system. We employed electrical, thermal, and temperature dependent X -ray diffraction (XRD) studies in order to characterize the transition in a host of samples. We also carried out detailed magnetic measurements over a temperature regime 2-300 K under a magnetic field 100-10000 Oe both on bulk and nano-crystalline systems. While in the bulk system a sharp endothermic peak at T N together with a broad feature, ranging over nearly ~150 K (∆T), could be observed in calorimetry, the nanoscale systems exhibit only the broad feature. The characteristic dielectric anomaly, expected at T N , is found to occur both at T O and T N across ∆T in the bulk sample. The Maxwell-Wagner component due to interfaces between heterogenous regions with different conductivities is also present. The magnetic properties, measured at lower temperature, corroborate our observations in calorimetry. The metastability increases in the nanoscale BiFeO 3 with divergence between zero-field cooled (ZFC) and field cooled (FC) magnetization below ~100 K and faster magnetic relaxation. Interestingly, in nanoscale BiFeO 3 , one also observes finite coercivity at lower temperature which points out that suitable design of particle size and shape may induce ferromagnetism. The inhomogeneous distribution of Bi/Fe-ions and/or oxygen nonstoichiometry seems to be giving rise to broad features in thermal, magnetic as well as in electrical responses.

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