Abstract Studying multiferroic magnetoelectrics has been a focus field for the last decade and a half, and the exploration of new materials is one of the several aspects of this quest. Here we report on the synthesis and characterization of NiFe2O4-based multiferroic composites which employ (Ba,Ca)(Zr,Ti)O3 as the ferroelectric/piezoelectric component and NiFe2O4 as the magnetostrictive phase. We find that these composites show excellent magnetoelectric properties. Especially the composite with 30 vol% of NiFe2O4 has a converse ME coefficient approximately two times larger than the previously reported one for BaTiO3-CoFe2O4 composites. A relationship between the phase connectivity within these composites and the ME properties was explored by the time of flight secondary ion mass microscopy. We believe that our investigation will be helpful for the design of magnetoelectric materials as components of sensors and memory devices.

中文翻译：

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(Ba,Ca)(Zr,Ti)O 3 - NiFe 2 O 4 多铁性材料中的强逆磁电效应：相连接性和界面耦合之间的关系

摘要 研究多铁磁电是过去十五年的一个重点领域，新材料的探索是这一探索的几个方面之一。在这里，我们报告了基于 NiFe2O4 的多铁性复合材料的合成和表征，该复合材料采用 (Ba,Ca)(Zr,Ti)O3 作为铁电/压电元件，NiFe2O4 作为磁致伸缩相。我们发现这些复合材料显示出优异的磁电性能。特别是含有 30 vol% NiFe2O4 的复合材料的逆 ME 系数大约是先前报道的 BaTiO3-CoFe2O4 复合材料的两倍。通过飞行时间二次离子质量显微镜探索了这些复合材料内的相连接性与 ME 特性之间的关系。