Although
there is considerable interest in BiFeO3 owing
to its versatile physical properties, which make it suitable for a
wide range of applications, its high leakage current is a significant
limitation. Among various methods for reducing the leakage current,
substitution with transition-metal or rare-earth elements is widely
recognized as the most effective approach. Herein, to enable in-depth
studies of the physical properties of BiFeO3, high-quality
epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films with a low leakage current
must be formed. However, owing to the difficulty of controlling the
element doping when pulsed laser deposition is used for epitaxial
thin-film growth, studies on substitutional doping based on epitaxial
BiFeO3 thin films have not been systematically carried
out. In this regard, we establish an innovative approach for overcoming
the high leakage current of BiFeO3 by fabricating artificially
engineered superlattice-based epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films
in which there is a significant reduction of the leakage current.
The control of the element doping in epitaxial BiFeO3 thin
films is easily regulated precisely at the atomic-scale level. The
results of this study strongly suggest that superlattice-based epitaxial
BiFeO3 thin films can be a cornerstone for exploring the
reliable fundamental physical properties of substitutional doping
in epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films.