The ferroelectric and ferromagnetic characterization of CoFe2O4/Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–PbTiO3 multilayered thin films

The multiferroic (PMN-PT/CFO)n (n = 1,2) multilayered thin films have been prepared on SiO2/Si(1 0 0) substrate with LNO as buffer layer via a rf magnetron sputtering method. The structure and surface morphology of multilayered thin films were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atom force microscopy (AFM), respectively. The smooth, dense and crack-free surface shows the excellent crystal quality with root-mean-square (RMS) roughness only 2.9 nm, and average grain size of CFO thin films on the surface is about 44 nm. The influence of the thin films thickness size, periodicity n and crystallite orientation on their properties including ferroelectric, ferromagnetic properties in the (PMN-PT/CFO)n multilayered thin films were investigated. For multilayered thin films with n = 1 and n = 2, the remanent polarization Pr are 17.9 μC/cm2 and 9.9 μC/cm2; the coercivity Hc are 1044 Oe and 660 Oe, respectively. In addition, the relative mechanism are also discussed.