Increasing Electrical Resistivity of P-Type BiFeO₃ Ceramics by Hydrogen Peroxide-Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis

Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO₃, BFO) is still widely investigated both because of the great diversity of its possible applications and from the perspective of intrinsic defect engineering in the perovskite structure. Defect control in BiFeO₃ semiconductors could provide a key technology for overcoming undesirable limitations, namely, a strong leakage current, which is attributed to the presence of oxygen vacancies (V) and Bi vacancies (V). Our study proposes a hydrothermal method for the reduction of the concentration of V during the ceramic synthesis of BiFeO₃.Using hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) as part of the medium, p-type BiFeO₃ ceramics characterized by their low conductivity were obtained. Hydrogen peroxide acted as the electron donor in the perovskite structure, controlling V in the BiFeO₃ semiconductor, which caused the dielectric constant and loss to decrease along with the electrical resistivity. The reduction of Bi vacancies highlighted by a FT-IR and Mott-Schottky analysis has an expected contribution to the dielectric characteristic. A decrease in the dielectric constant (with approximately 40%) and loss (3 times) and an increase of the electrical resistivity (by 3 times) was achieved by the hydrogen peroxide-assisted hydrothermal synthesized BFO ceramics, as compared with the hydrothermal synthesized BFOs.