Abstract
The nature of mechanical strain mediated electromagnetic coupling in multiferroic composites has been studied extensively in recent years. This review is on composites with ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic oxides and ferroelectrics. Systems studied so far include samples with spinel ferrites, hexagonal ferrites or lanthanum manganites for the ferromagnetic phase and barium titanate, lead zirconate titanate (PZT), lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate (PMN-PT) or lead zinc niobate–lead titanate (PZN-PT) for the ferroelectric phase. Bilayer and multilayer heterostructures, bulk composites, core shell nanoparticles and core shell nanotubes and nanowires were investigated for their response to magnetic fields, termed direct magnetoelectric effect (DME). Several systems show a giant low frequency DME and resonance enhancement at bending and electromechanical resonance. The response of the composites to an electric field, called converse ME effect, is found to be strong in several ferrite–ferroelectric composites. The potential for use of the composites for pico-Tesla magnetic sensors and high frequency electric field tunable ferrite signal processing devices are also addressed in this review.
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