Studies on photovoltaic properties of BFO/WO3 bilayer thin films for solar energy harvesting applications

•WO3 insulating layer is utilized with BFO thin film layer for the fabrication of BFO/WO3 bilayer thin film structure.•In BFO/WO3 bilayer structure, the WO3 nanostructured thin film layer was fabricated utilizing rf-magnetron sputtering technique under the optimized parameters.•BFO thin film layer was fabricated by varying laser energy (150 mJ − 250 mJ) using PLD technique.•The prepared bilayer structure exhibit reduced leakage current along with high ferroelectric polarization.•BFO/WO3 bilayer structure prepared at 200 mJ laser energy demonstrated the superior ferroelectric properties (Ps = 63.24 µC/cm2 and Pr = 25.94 µC/cm2)•The bilayer structure fabricated at 200 mJ exhibits Jsc = ∼ 18 mA/cm2 and Voc = ∼320 mV under the UV illumination of I = 160 mW/cm2 and λ = 355 nm.•Obtained results suggest the utilization of prepared BFO/WO3 bilayer thin film structures on future novel energy harvesting purposes.