Investigations of structural, dielectric, optical, magnetic and magnetoelectric properties of biphasic BaTiO3 -CoFe2O4 composites
摘要
Multiferroic composite system, (x)BaTiO3-(1-x)CoFe2O4 (x = 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8), developed using solid-state reaction technique to explore their potential applications, primarily in magnetic field sensing. X-ray diffraction and Rietveld refinement confirmed co-occurrence of both ferromagnetic CoFe2O4 (CFO) and ferroelectric BaTiO3 (BT) phases within synthesized composites. Dielectric measurements highlighted frequency-dependent dispersive behavior of both dielectric constant and loss tangent. 0.4BT-0.6CFO composite exhibited the highest dielectric constant (~ 1200) at 1 kHz and 400 °C, suggesting its potential for energy storage and tunable device applications. AC conductivity showed an increasing trend with both frequency and temperature. The activation energies varied from 0.69 eV to 0.80 eV, where 0.2BT-0.8CFO composite attained the highest DC conductivity (~ 11.40 × 10− 3 S/m) with an activation energy of 0.72 eV. UV-Vis spectroscopy revealed band gaps ranging from 2.14 eV to 2.59 eV, showing an increasing trend upon increasing BT content, suggesting a semiconducting nature. Saturation magnetization showed an inverse relation with BT concentration, declining from 55.18 emu/g for 0.2BT-0.8CFO to 15.18 emu/g for 0.8BT-0.2CFO. The synthesized composites showed good values of magnetoelectric (ME) coupling coefficient ranging from 0.54 to 0.98 mV/cm.Oe, where the highest ME coefficient was observed in 0.8BT-0.2CFO, highlighting the practical applications of these multiferroic composites in magnetic field sensing devices.