LAUSR

Ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism have been investigated in a lead-free 0.5Ba(Zr_0.2Ti_0.8)O₃–0.5(Ba_0.7Ca_0.3)TiO₃ (BZT–BCT)/La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ (LSMO) heterostructure for multiferroic (MF) applications. The BZT–BCT thin film has been grown on LSMO/lanthanum aluminate, LaAlO₃ (LAO) by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Prior to that, the LSMO layer was deposited on a single-crystal LAO substrate by PLD. The epitaxial growth of the (001) oriented films was confirmed by X-ray diffraction analysis. The small value of the full-width at half-maximum of the rocking curve peak (0.1°) performed about (002) plane of the BZT–BCT film indicates an out-of-plane orientation of the film. The polarization switching behavior in the heterostructure device was observed with a remnant polarization of $\sim 47~\boldsymbol {\mu \text {C}/}{{\text {cm}}}^{2}$ and a coercive field of ~180kV/cm at an applied voltage of 5 V. The frequency-dependent relative dielectric constant varies in-between 5100 and 4900 in the frequency range from 1 to 50 kHz during the dielectric measurements of the fabricated device. The observed low value of the dielectric loss (0.02) confirms the outstanding quality of the ferroelectric device. A well-saturated room temperature magnetization–applied field curve, with a coercive field of ~1200A/m and a remnant magnetization of ~110kA/m, was observed in the LSMO/LAO system indicating the ferromagnetic behavior of the film. The temperature-dependent magnetization of the LSMO film exhibits a ferromagnetic-to-paramagnetic transition at ~360K. These results on all solid-state ferroelectric–ferromagnetic heterostructure using BZT–BCT and LSMO open viable possibilities for MF applications.