Investigation of Magnetoelectric Coupling in Single-Phase Multiferroic Ceramics

Abstract

In this work, electrical permittivity measurements in lead iron niobate ceramics (PFN) were performed in the frequency and temperature range from 10 kHz to 1.2 GHz and from 15 K to 450 K, respectively. The microwave dielectric results revealed unambiguously the magnetoelectric effect in the PFN and demonstrated that the nature of such coupling arises indirectly via ferroelastic contribution rather than a direct coupling between electrical and magnetic order parameters. Moreover, it was also verified that such coupling can be enhanced or suppressed depending on the relative orientation between the probing electric field and the macroscopic polarization.

Keywords:

• Multiferroics
• magnetoelectric
• ferroelectrics
• microwave
• hot-pressing

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Brazilian agencies FAPESP and CNPq for the financial support.