Performance investigation of cement-based laminated multifunctional magnetoelectric composites

In this paper, cement-based multifunctional magnetoelectric (ME) composite with the laminated structure of one lead zirconate titanate (PZT) layer sandwiched between two cement-based Tb1-xDyxFe2 alloy (Terfenol-D) layers has been successfully fabricated for the first time in the world. Furtherrriore, systematic investigation has been conducted on the overall performance of this newly developed composite. The dielectric and piezoelectric behaviors of this composite are equivalent to those of pure PZT, which dominates the ferroelectric properties of composite. A giant ME response is observed in the composite because of the strong Mechanical coupling interaction among different phases detected by fiber Bragg grating sensing technique. The measured maximum ME sensitivity alpha(E33) can reach up to 1.071 V/cm Oe under 3000 Oe H-dc field at low frequency with f(v) = 0.30 of Terfenol-D in the composite, which is much superior to that of other polymer-based composites (just about 200-300 mV/cm.Oe) reported. Such great ME sensitivity can be attributed to that cement functions not only as particles binder, but also as the transmission medium with higher transfer efficiency. Such excellent performances make this novel ME composite be a strong potential candidate for engineering applications as sensors, actuators and other smart transducers. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.