Temperature-dependent phase transition and comparative investigation on enhanced magnetic and optical properties between sillenite and perovskite bismuth ferrite-rGO nanocomposites

The manuscript reports the synthesis as well as a comparative investigation of the structural, magnetic, and optical properties between sillenite and perovskite type bismuth ferrite-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites. Graphite oxide is prepared using the modified Hummers' method, followed by hydrothermal synthesis of bismuth ferrite-reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites at different reaction temperatures. The X-ray diffraction measurements confirm the formation of perovskite type BiFeO3-rGO nanocomposites at a reaction temperature of 200 °C. This is the lowest temperature to obtain perovskite type BiFeO3-rGO nanocomposites under the reaction procedure adopted, however, a structural transition to sillenite type Bi25FeO40-rGO is observed at 180 °C. The FESEM images demonstrate that the particle size of the perovskite nanocomposite is 25–60 nm, and for the sillenite phase nanocomposite it is 10–30 nm. The as-synthesized nanocomposites exhibit significantly enhanced saturation magnetization over pure BiFeO3 nanoparticles, with the sillenite Bi25FeO40-rGO nanocomposite having higher saturation magnetization than perovskite BiFeO3-rGO. The optical characteristics of the as-synthesized nanocomposites demonstrate considerably higher absorbance in the visible range with significantly lower band gap in comparison to undoped BiFeO3. Again, the sillenite Bi25FeO40-rGO nanocomposite is shown to have a lower band gap compared to the perovskite counterpart. Our investigation provides a means of selective phase formation as desired between sillenite Bi25FeO40-rGO and perovskite BiFeO3-rGO by controlling the hydrothermal reaction temperature. The outcome of our investigation suggests that the formation of nanocomposite of sillenite bismuth ferrite with reduced graphene oxide is promising to improve the magnetic and optical properties for potential technological applications.