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Front Cover: Surface studies of BiFeO 3 with interdigital electrodes (Phys. Status Solidi A 7/2012)
Author(s) -
Kumar Ashok,
Scott J. F.,
Martínez R.,
Srinivasan G.,
Katiyar R. S.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
physica status solidi (a)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.532
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1862-6319
pISSN - 1862-6300
DOI - 10.1002/pssa.201290016
Subject(s) - bismuth ferrite , multiferroics , materials science , condensed matter physics , bismuth , electrode , phase transition , ferrite (magnet) , polarization (electrochemistry) , engineering physics , nanotechnology , optoelectronics , ferroelectricity , physics , dielectric , chemistry , composite material , metallurgy , quantum mechanics
In 1974, nearly forty years ago, Maria Polomska and her colleagues discovered an anomaly in bismuth ferrite (BiFeO 3 ) at 458 K. Despite a large number of publications on this material (more than a thousand since 2005), the origin of this anomaly has proved enigmatic. In the study on pp. 1207–1212 , by use of in‐plane interdigital electrodes, Ashok Kumar et al. have shown that it is a surface phase transition. Two other surface phase transitions are confirmed at 201 K and 548 K, bringing the total of bulk and surface transitions in BiFeO 3 to nine. Bismuth ferrite is very important from the standpoint of basic physics and devices, because it is the only room‐temperature multiferroic magnetoelectric known with device‐worthy switched polarization in the range of μC/cm 2 (other recent discoveries at or near room temperature switch nC/cm 2 ‐ a 1000× less charge). The new work is of special importance for devices that involve surfaces in any way, such as THz emitters.