The
recent demand of multifunctional materials and devices for
advanced applications in energy conversion and data storage resulted
into a revival of multiferroics, that is, materials characterized
by the coexistence of ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. Despite
intense efforts made in the past decade, single-phase room temperature
multiferroics are yet to be discovered/fabricated. Nanostructured
ferroic materials could potentially exhibit multiferroism since a
high fraction of their atoms/ions are superficial, thereby altering
significantly the properties of the bulk phase. Alternately, a magnetic
order can be induced into ferroelectric materials upon aliovalent
doping with magnetic ions. Here, we report on the synthesis of aggregate-free
single-phase transition-metal-doped BaTiO3 quasi-monodisperse
cuboidal nanocrystals (NC) which exhibit multiferroic properties
at room temperature and can be suitable for applications in data storage.
The proposed synthetic route allows the inclusion of a high concentration
of magnetic ions such as M
n+ (M = Cr,
Mn, Fe, Co) up to a nominal concentration of 4% without the formation
of any secondary phase. The size of the nanocrystals was controlled
in a wide range from ∼15 up to ∼70 nm by varying the
reaction time from 48 to 144 h. The presence of unpaired electrons
and their magnetic ordering have been probed by electron paramagnetic
resonance spectroscopy (EPR), and a vibrating sample magnetometer
(VSM). Likewise, an acentric structure, associated with the existence
of a dielectric polarization, was observed by lattice dynamics analysis
and piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). These results show that
high-quality titanium-containing perovskite nanocrystals which display
multiferroic properties at room temperature can be fabricated via
soft solution-based synthetic routes, and the properties of these
materials can be modulated by changing the size of the nanocrystals
and the concentration of the dopant thereby opening the door to the
design and study of single-phase multiferroic materials.