ABSTRACT
In this work, the influence of the ferroelectric phase on the magnetoelectric response of particulate magnetoelectric composites were investigated. The composites constituted by PMN-PT, PZT and PBN as ferroelectric phase and CoFe2O4 as ferromagnetic phase (prepared through the conventional solid state method) were synthesized by hot forging method in the 80/20 molar ratio using the 0-3 connectivity. We show that the increase in the magnetic coercive field for composites composed by PZT and PBN in comparison to the PMN–PT ferroelectric phase is related to the different elastic constants of ferroelectric matrix used. Also, the ME properties has been attributed to the mechanically mediated effect, in which the ME values are strongly dependent to the piezoelectric and elastic properties of the ferroelectric phases and the maximization of ME coefficient was obtained using ferroelectric and ferromagnetic phases with similar elastic modulus.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Mr. Francisco José Picon and Mrs. Natália Aparecida Zanardi for the technical support, to Prof. Yvonne P. Mascarenhas (Crystallography Group of the Physics Institute of USP-São Carlos) for the use of the XRD Lab facilities, and FAPESP (proc. 08/04025-0, 10/07518-7, 12/24025-0 and 15/07513-9) and CNPq for the financial support.