Magnetic field anomaly detector using magnetoelectric composites

This study reports the low frequency magnetoelectric (ME) response of the sintered composites comprising of a piezoelectric phase Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O-3 (PZT) and magnetostrictive phases NiFe1.9Mn0.1O4 (NFM) and Ni0.8Zn0.2Fe2O4 (NZF) with varying ferrite contents of 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20 mol %. It was found that the ME coefficient for the PZT-NZF samples shows considerably less scattering as a function of frequency and the composition 0.8PZT-0.2NZF exhibited a flat response in the range of 10-100 Hz with a magnitude of 220 mV/cm Oe. This composition was used to design the magnetic field anomaly detector mounted in front of a global positioning system (GPS) controlled vehicle. The results from the vehicle test clearly demonstrate the feasibility of using sintered ME composites for magnetic field detection in the noisy environment. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.