NICKEL AND LEAD ZIRCONIUM TITANATE MULTI-LAYERED MAGNETOELECTRIC COMPOSITES PREPARED BY ELECTROLESS DEPOSITION

Magnetoelectric (ME) nickel and lead zirconium titanate multi-layers with neither electrodes nor bonding layers was developed by electroless deposition. Scanning electron microscopy reveals that the Ni layer is in direct contact with the PZT layer without inter-layer not only in Ni/PZT/Ni trilayer but also in Ni/PZT/Ni/PZT/Ni multi-layer. The in-plane parallel magnetostriction has been measured for electroless deposited Ni. The saturation magnetostriction is 32.6 x 10(-6). When the total thickness of multi-layers is the same, the ME voltage coefficient alpha(E,31) decreases with increasing the stacking periodicity. On condition that the thickness of each layer is the same, the ME voltage coefficient V-E,V-31 of the Ni/PZT/Ni/PZT/Ni multi-layer is nearly twice higher than that of the Ni/PZT/Ni tri-layer at the resonance frequency, which provides a new choice to obtain higher ME voltage coefficient.