铁酸铋是目前唯一在室温下同时具有铁电性和反铁磁性的单相多铁性材料，并且这两种铁性有序之间存在磁电耦合效应，其铁电居里温度和反铁磁奈尔温度都远在室温以上，在光电器件、自旋电子器件、铁电随机存储器、磁电存储单元等领域有着广阔的应用前景。此外，作为一种典型的铁电材料，铁酸铋还具有较大的剩余极化强度、相对较小的带隙宽度 以及较大的光吸收系数，理论上具有较大的光电转换效率，有望成为下一代太阳能光伏电池的备选材料。然而，目前有关铁酸铋材料光伏效应的机制还没有明确的定论，影响其光伏效应的因素较多，例如电畴、界面、厚度、退极化场、缺陷及极化强度等。欲提高铁酸铋材料的光电转换效率，许多问题亟待解决。综述了近几年来国内外关于铁酸铋薄膜光伏效应机制方面的研究。

Bismuth ferrite is the only single phase multiferroic material which shows both ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic properties at room temperature and potential magneto electric effect between the two ferro orders. The ferroelectric Curie temperature and the antiferromagnetic Neel temperatures are both above room temperature. It has broad application prospects in the fields of optoelectronic devices, spin electric devices, ferroelectric random access memories, magnetoelectric memory. Besides, bismuth ferrite has relatively larger polarization, lower band-gap and large absorption coefficient, and theoretically may become an alternative for next generation of photovoltaic cell because of its photoelectric conversion efficiency. However, there is no clear conclusion about the mechanism of the photovoltaic effect of multiferroic Bismuth ferrite materials. And many problems need to be solved because many factors can affect the photovoltaic effect, including domains, interfaces, thickness, depolarization field, defect, polarization and so on. Based on these considerations above, we review the research progress of Bismuth ferrite thin film of the photovoltaic effect mechanism.