Fabrication of graphene-oxide/SmFeO₃ interfaces by ambient pressure/high-temperature fusion of Fe₃C@CNOs with Sm₂O₃@C-capsules

The possibility of creating direct interfaces between graphene and oxide based orthoferrite materials can have important implications for applications of such orthoferrites RFeO₃ (R = rare-earth ion) systems in ultrafast photo-magnetic recording, enhanced magnetoelectric interactions, ferroelectrics and others. In this work we demonstrate that fusion of Fe₃C-filled carbon nano-onions (Fe₃C@CNOs) with carbon encapsulated Sm₂O₃ (Sm₂O₃@C) particles triggers the formation of such type of interfaces in a novel graphene-oxide like carbon material filled with a Pbnm SmFeO₃ phase. By employing a consistent number of experimental techniques, we show that this material possesses important sp³ characteristics which can be mostly correlated to the presence of C–O and C[dbnd]O bonds at the interface.