Annealing and aging effect in 0.95 Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3-0.05 NiFe1.9Mn0.1O4 particulate magnetoelectric composites

The results in this letter show the possibility of realizing a high magnetoelectric (ME) coefficient material by synthesizing the particulate composites of ferroelectric and ferromagnetic components using the annealing and aging treatment. The ME composites were fabricated using a combination of conventional mixed oxide sintering and thermal treatment. The thermal treatment constituted of annealing at temperature closer to calcination temperature (∼800degC) followed by aging at lower temperatures (300 - 400degC). Microstructure of the fabricated samples was analyzed using the X-ray mapping in scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and it was found that NiFe1.9Mn0.1O4 (NFM) is distributed inside the Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) grains on the length scales of 100 nm. The magnitude of piezoelectric constant (d33) and the dielectric constant exhibited significant variation with aging time and temperature. It was found that the magnitude of ME coefficient for PZT-5NFM sample increased from 37 to 56 mV/cm·Oe after thermal treatment, an enhancement of ∼50%. (author)