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Exchange biasing of magnetoelectric composites

Nature Materials volume 11, pages 523–529 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Magnetoelectric composite materials are promising candidates for highly sensitive magnetic-field sensors. However, the composites showing the highest reported magnetoelectric coefficients require the presence of external d.c. magnetic bias fields, which is detrimental to their use as sensitive high-resolution magnetic-field sensors. Here, we report magnetoelectric composite materials that instead rely on intrinsic magnetic fields arising from exchange bias in the device. Thin-film magnetoelectric two–two composites were fabricated by magnetron sputtering on silicon-cantilever substrates. The composites consist of piezoelectric AlN and multilayers with the sequence Ta/Cu/Mn70Ir30/Fe50Co50 or Ta/Cu/Mn70Ir30/Fe70.2Co7.8Si12B10 serving as the magnetostrictive component. The thickness of the ferromagnetic layers and angle dependency of the exchange bias field are used to adjust the shift of the magnetostriction curve in such a way that the maximum piezomagnetic coefficient occurs at zero magnetic bias field. These self-biased composites show high sensitivity to a.c. magnetic fields with a maximum magnetoelectric coefficient of 96 V cm−1 Oe−1 at mechanical resonance.

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Figure 1: Exchange biasing of ferromagnetic single-layer and multilayer systems.
Figure 2: TEM of an exchange-biased magnetostrictive multilayer system.
Figure 3: Total anisotropy field versus magnetostrictive layer thickness tFM for the same samples as in Fig. 1b.
Figure 4: The antagonism between exchange bias and magnetostriction.
Figure 5: Solution to the antagonism by introducing the inclination angle .
Figure 6: Magnetoelectric voltage coefficients αME of exchange-biased magnetoelectric composite sensors as a function of an externally applied magnetic field H.
Figure 7: Performance of the Fe70.2Co7.8Si12B10-based magnetoelectric sensor operated with a charge amplifier.
Figure 8: Comparison of magnetoelectric sensors with and without exchange bias.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank J. McCord for fruitful discussions and the German Science Foundation DFG for financial support through the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 855 ‘ME Composite Materials—Biomagnetic Interfaces of the Future’. Many thanks go to C. Zamponi for accurate TEM sample preparation by focused ion beam technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kiel University, Institute for Materials Science, Kaiserstr. 2, 24143 Kiel, Germany

    Enno Lage, Christine Kirchhof, Viktor Hrkac, Lorenz Kienle, Eckhard Quandt & Dirk Meyners

  2. Kiel University, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Kaiserstr. 2, 24143 Kiel, Germany

    Robert Jahns & Reinhard Knöchel

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Contributions

E.L., D.M. and E.Q. designed the experiment. C.K. and E.L. were responsible for the preparation and characterization of the Fe70.2Co7.8Si12B10 and Fe50Co50 samples, respectively. V.H. performed TEM measurements and data analysis. L.K. supervised the TEM measurements and data analysis. R.J. did the noise measurements under the supervision of R.K. E.L. and D.M. developed the angle concept of effective exchange bias and the multilayer stack. D.M. and E.Q. supervised the research. All authors contributed to the manuscript and the interpretation of the data.

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Correspondence to Dirk Meyners.

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Lage, E., Kirchhof, C., Hrkac, V. et al. Exchange biasing of magnetoelectric composites. Nature Mater 11, 523–529 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3306

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