Multiferroic Magnetoelectric Composites: Historical Perspective, Status, and Future Directions

Multiferroic magnetoelectric materials, which simultaneously exhibit ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism, have recently stimulated a sharply increasing number of research activities for their scientific interest and significant technological promise in the novel multifunctional devices. Natural multiferroic single-phase compounds are rare, and their magnetoelectric responses are either relatively weak or occurs at temperatures too low for practical applications. In contrast, multiferroic composites, which incorporate both ferroelectric and ferri-/ferromagnetic phases, typically yield giant magnetoelectric coupling response above room temperature, which makes them ready for technological applications. This review of mostly recent activities begins with a brief summary of the historical perspective of the multiferroic magnetoelectric composites since its appearance in 1972. In such composites the magnetoelectric effect is generated as a product property of a magnetostrictive and a piezoelectric substance. A...