Lanthanum and Manganese Co-Doping Effects on Structural, Morphological, and Magnetic Properties of Sol-Gel Derived BiFeO(3)

In this work, lanthanum and manganese co-substitution effects on different properties of bismuth ferrite solid solutions Bi(1-x)La(x)Fe(0.85)Mn(0.15)O(3) (x from 0 to 1) prepared by a sol-gel synthetic approach have been investigated. It was observed that the structural, morphological, and magnetic properties of obtained specimens are influenced by the amount of introduced La(3+) ions. Surprisingly, only the compound with a composition of BiFe(0.85)Mn(0.15)O(3) was not monophasic, and the presence of neighboring phases was determined from X-ray diffraction analysis and Mössbauer measurements. Structural transitions from orthorhombic to cubic and back to orthorhombic were also observed depending on the La(3+) amount. Antiferromagnetic behaviour was observed for all of the samples, with the highest magnetisation values for Bi(0.5)La(0.5)Fe(0.85)Mn(0.15)O(3). Additionally, structural attributes and morphological features were evaluated by Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively.