Development of Lead Free Magnetoelectric Materials for Magnetic Field Sensor applications

(100-x) Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3 (NBT)-(x) NiFe2O4 (NFO)(x = 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100) composites are synthesized using conventional solid state reaction method. Crystal structure studies are performed by using X-ray Diffraction technique (XRD) and the Rietveld analysis of XRD patterns confirms the co-existence of cubic (NFO) and rhombohedral (NBT) symmetry with Fd- 3m and R3c space groups, respectively. Micro-structural study reveals the formation of combination of composite phases and its inter-coupling grains. The average grain sizes and area percentage of each phase for the composites are calculated using Image J software. The Magnetisation versus Magnetic field (M-H) hysteresis loops show soft magnetic behavior of composites with variation in Saturation magnetization (MS) and Coercivity (HC). A maximum MS (34 emu/g) and low HC (15 Oe) is obtained for (80) NFO - (20) NBT composite.The Polarization – Electric field (P-E) analysis shows that the maximum saturation polarization (PS) is obtained for (60)NBT-(40)NFO sample and is attributed to the leakage current generated by conductive NFO phase. The coupling between the ferrite and ferroelectric phase is studied based on the magnetoelectric voltage coefficient(αME). The maximum (αME) of 1.82 mV/cm-Oe is obtained for (80)NBT -(20)NFO sample and this is almost 80% higher than the previously published literature on NBT-NFO composites. This can be attributed to the uniform distribution of grains with each ferroelectric phase surrounded by ferrite phase as shown in the morphological study.