Bismuth ferrites (BiFeO3) are a surprising class of multiferroic materials owning to exhibit both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties at room temperature, which is widely used in applications including microelectronics, spintronics and photocatalytic activity. The pure BiFeO3 nanofiber and nanoparticle prepared by electrospinning and hydrothermal method respectively were reported for clarifying the influence of various morphologies and size on magneto-optical properties. The X-ray diffractometer, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, physical property measurement system, UV-Vis spectrophotometer and multi-function temperature control photochemical reaction instrument were used to characterize the physical and chemical properties of samples with different morphologies and sizes. Compared with the BiFeO3 nanoparticle, the coexistence of lower crystal size (82-98 nm) and larger specific surface ratio in BFO nanofiber had potential ability to improve the value of remanent magnetization (0.042 emu/g), which lead to destroy the long-period spin-modulated spiral antiferromagnetic order and enhanced the contribution of total magnetic moment. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the non-compensated surface spin effect and exchange coupling effect were raised due to the lower nano-scale. On the one hand, it was efficiently inhibited the recombination rate of photogenerated e-/h+ pairs and enhanced the charge separation efficiency owning to those of BFO nanofiber possessed smaller bandgap (1.98 eV), larger methyl orange (MO) degradation rate (63%) and higher decomposition reaction constant (k=0.011 61 min-1). On the other hand, the enhancement of photocatalytic activity of BFO nanofiber with larger spectific surface area can be attributed to the increase of hydroxyl, which could be accelerate to the diffusion of hydroxyl radical, and making the dye molecules more accessibly turn into the catalyst surface area. © 2022, Materials Review Magazine. All right reserved.
