Hybrid multiferroic fibers of Al₃Fe₅O₁₂ nanoparticles loaded PVDF with excellent flexibility and superior magnetoelectric response via an electrospinning technique with a rotating collector

Magnetoelectric multiferroics are a class of multifunctional materials, which simultaneously exhibit magnetic and ferroelectric orderings, and have recently drawn ever-increasing interest due to their promising multifunctional characteristics suitable for the realization of ultramodern data storage devices, magnetic field sensors, energy harvesters and more. However, in single phase compounds the observed magnetoelectric (ME) coupling is very weak which hinder their practical applications. As a promising strategy to develop high performance multiferroics (MF) materials, composite approach-combining suitable ferroelectric and magnetic phases has been identified. Based on the constituents, composite MF systems can be classified into ceramic-ceramic and polymer-ceramic systems. Apart from the high ME property, polymer-ceramic MF possesses excellent flexibility, non-brittle nature and follows an easy processing approach. To develop flexible MF, we fabricated Al₃Fe₅O₁₂ nanoparticles loaded Poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) fibers via an electrospinning technique with a rotating collector. Different weight percentages of Al₃Fe₅O₁₂ nanoparticles (2, 4, 8, 16 wt%) were uniformly embedded as the magnetic fillers in the ferroelectric fiber matrix. Detailed measurements have been performed to study the structural, dielectric, magnetic and magnetoelectric properties of the samples. Substantial enhancement of ferroelectric property has been noticed in electrospun composite fibers due to the electric poling and mechanical stretching during the spinning process. Among the various samples, a high value of ME coefficient has been noticed for the composite fiber loaded with 16 wt% Al₃Fe₅O₁₂ nanoparticles. The results of the study show that the approach is simple, cost-effective, and well-suited for large-scale fabrication of high-performance flexible MFs. (author)