Magnetic properties and magneto electric effect in ferroelectric rich Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4+ BPZT ME composites

Magneto electric composites with composition (x) Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4(1- x) Ba0.8Pb0.2Zr0.8Ti0.2O3 (BPZT - barium lead zirconate titanate) in which x varies as 0.0, 0.15, 0.30, 0.45 and 1.0 mol% were prepared by standard double sintering ceramic method. The presence of constituent phases such as ferrite and ferroelectric was confirmed by X-ray diffraction. The structural analyses were carried out by using X-ray diffraction pattern. Scanning electron micrographs (SEM) were taken to understand the microstructure of the samples. The calculated values of the porosity of the samples lie between 4.5% and 16.2%. The hysteresis measurements were made to determine saturation magnetization (M-s), magnetic moment (mu(B)) and coercivity (H-c). From the AC susceptibility measurements the contribution of both the single domain (SD) particles of the ferrite phase and mixed domain (SD+MD) particles of the composites in ME output were explained. The static magneto electric voltage coefficients (dE/dH) H were measured as a function of intensity of magnetic field and the maximum ME coefficient were observed for the composites with 30% of ferrite+70% of ferroelectric phase. Crown Copyright (c) 2008 Published by Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.