Preparation of pure stoichiometric BiFeO3 is challenging due to the volatility of bismuth during firing which leads to the formation of stable secondary Bi25FeO39 (selenite) and Bi2Fe4O9 (mullite) phase.

The advantage of the chemical routes is the compositional homogeneity of the precursors and the reduced loss of bismuth due to the much lower temperatures needed.

In sol-gel routes, an amorphous precursor is calcined at 300-600 Celsius to remove organic residuals and to promote crystallization of the bismuth ferrite perovskite phase, while the disadvantage is that the resulting powder must be sintered at high temperature to make a dense polycrystal.

Since the content of Fe cations in this semiconductor material, Mӧssbauer spectroscopy is a proper technique to detect the presence of a paramagnetic component in the phase.

Epitaxial thin films have the great advantage that their properties can be tuned by processing[13] or chemical doping,[14] and that they can be integrated in electronic circuitry.

Epitaxial strain induced by single crystalline substrates with different lattice parameters than bismuth ferrite can be used to modify the crystal structure to monoclinic or tetragonal symmetry and change the ferroelectric, piezoelectric or magnetic properties.

But the main hindrance is that a very small photocurrent is generated in ferroelectric materials like LiNbO3,[17] which is due to its large bandgap and low conductivity.

In this direction bismuth ferrite has shown a great potential since a large photocurrent effect and above bandgap voltage[18] is observed in this material under illumination.