Recent Progress in Devices Based on Magnetoelectric Composite Thin Films

The strain-driven interfacial coupling between the ferromagnetic and ferroelectric constituents of magnetoelectric (ME) composites makes them potential candidates for novel multifunctional devices. ME composites in the form of thin-film heterostructures show promising applications in miniaturized ME devices. This article reports the recent advancement in ME thin-film devices, such as highly sensitive magnetic field sensors, ME antennas, integrated tunable ME inductors, and ME band-pass filters, is discussed. (Pb1-xZrx)TiO3 (PZT), Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT), Aluminium nitride (AlN), and Al1-xScxN are the most commonly used piezoelectric constituents, whereas FeGa, FeGaB, FeCo, FeCoB, and Metglas (FeCoSiB alloy) are the most commonly used magnetostrictive constituents in the thin film ME devices. The ME field sensors offer a limit of detection in the fT/Hz(1/2) range at the mechanical resonance frequency. However, below resonance, different frequency conversion techniques with AC magnetic or electric fields or the delta-E effect are used. Noise floors of 1-100 pT/Hz(1/2) at 1 Hz were obtained. Acoustically actuated nanomechanical ME antennas operating at a very-high frequency as well as ultra-high frequency (0.1-3 GHz) range, were introduced. The ME antennas were successfully miniaturized by a few orders smaller in size compared to the state-of-the-art conventional antennas. The designed antennas exhibit potential application in biomedical devices and wearable antennas. Integrated tunable inductors and band-pass filters tuned by electric and magnetic field with a wide operating frequency range are also discussed along with miniaturized ME energy harvesters.