Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Chemical Solution Deposited BiFeO 3 Thin Film: a Soft X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism Study

In this work, we report the electronic and magnetic properties of epitaxial BiFeO 3 (BFO) thin film deposited on SrTiO 3 (001) substrate via the chemical solution deposition technique. These properties of pure BFO thin films were characterized by X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism techniques (XMCD). The large magnetization at Fe-edge could be due to annealing in nitrogen. Annealing in nitrogen atmosphere increases the grain size and porosity which lead to create more oxygen vacancy. The presence of oxygen vacancies which compensate the bismuth vacancies created due to bismuth volatilization. The origin of large orbital momentum in BFO thin film is also discussed. The O K -edge spectra display large spectral variation depending on the polarization vector E . The structural distortion at oxygen octahedral induces large anisotropy due to Fe 3 d –O 2 p hybridization. The hybridized Fe 3 d orbitals contribute a much larger orbital momentum in BFO thin film.