Ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism in fine-grained multiferroic BaTiO 3/(Ni 0.5Zn 0.5)Fe 2O 4 composites prepared by a novel hybrid process

Abstract

Dense, homogeneous, and fine-grained multiferroic BaTiO 3/(Ni 0.5Zn 0.5)Fe 2O 4 composite ceramics are synthesized by a novel powder-in-sol precursor hybrid processing route. This route includes the dispersion of nanosized BaTiO 3 ferroelectric powders prepared via conventional sold-state ceramic process into (Ni 0.5Zn 0.5)Fe 2O 4 ferromagnetic sol-gel precursor prepared via a sol-gel wet chemistry process. The composite ceramics show coexistence of obvious ferroelectric and ferromagnetic hysteresis loops at room temperature. Very low dielectric loss of about 0.02–0.0067 in the range of 10 kHz–10 MHz can be achieved, which is about an order of magnitude lower than the results of many reports using conventional processes at room temperature. The combination of high permeability and permittivity with low losses in the ceramics enables significant miniaturization of electronic devices based on the ceramics.