Self-biased magnetoelectric coupling characteristics of three-phase composite transducers with nanocrystallin soft magnetic alloy

This paper reports the self-biased magnetoelectric (ME) effects in composites consisting of high-permeability Fe-based nanocrystalline soft magnetic alloy Fe73.5Cu1Nb3Si13.5B9 (FeCuNbSiB), pure nickel (Ni) and piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT). The FeCuNbSiB ribbons are fabricated on traditional laminates Ni/PZT/Ni through two modes: the attached mode (F-NPN-F) and the laminated mode (F/NPN/F). The F-NPN-F composite sufficiently reveals that the high-permeability FeCuNbSiB ribbons concentrate more magnetic flux in magnetostrictive Ni, which results in the self-biased ME effects of F-NPN-F. For the F/NPN/F composite, the FeCuNbSiB acts as the dynamic driver to enhance the effective piezomagnetic coefficient of Ni. The giant self-biased ME effects of F/NPN/F are because of the internal magnetic field between Ni and FeCuNbSiB due to their different magnetic characteristics. The influences of the numbers of FeCuNbSiB layers (L) on the resonant ME voltage coefficients (alpha (ME,r) ) for F-NPN-F and F/NPN/F composites are investigated in detail. The experiments demonstrate that the maximum alpha (ME,r) at zero-biased field is 80 V/cm Oe for F-NPN-F with L = 2, and 85 V/cm Oe for F/NPN/F with L = 4. This paper demonstrates that these two ME composites are suitable for achieving zero-biased ME transducers, power-free magnetic field sensors and energy harvesters.