The study for ferromagnetic properties and microstructure of Bi0.9Ho0.1FeO3

Bi_0.9Ho_0.1FeO₃ ceramic is prepared by sol-gel method. We investigated the effect of Ho element doping in the BiFeO₃. We studied the microstructure, morphology and ferromagnetism for Bi_0.9Ho_0.1FeO₃ ceramic by XRD, SEM and SQUID. It shows that Bi_0.9Ho_0.1FeO₃ ceramic exhibits single phase of perovskite structure. The c/a rate is elevated from 1 to 1.009 with respect to BiFeO₃. The grains of Bi_0.9Ho_0.1FeO₃ ceramic shrink sharply compared with the ones of BiFeO₃ ceramic, which is beneficial to the connection between grains and the density. Bi_0.9Ho_0.1FeO₃ ceramic exhibits obvious ferromagnetism while BiFeO₃ ceramic does not possess the macroscopic ferromagnetism at the RT. The magnetization sinks in the horizontal direction near the zero magnetic field. It indicates that Bi_0.9Ho_0.1FeO₃ ceramics do not only show obvious ferromagnetism, but also could exhibit lower magnetic hysteresis loss.