Ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism in fine-grained multiferroic BaTiO3/(Ni0.5Zn0.5)Fe2O4 composites prepared by a novel hybrid process

Dense, homogeneous, and fine-grained multiferroic BaTiO3/(Ni0.5Zn0.5)Fe2O4 composite ceramics are synthesized by a novel powder-in-sol precursor hybrid processing route. This route includes the dispersion of nanosized BaTiO3 ferroelectric powders prepared via conventional sold-state ceramic process into (Ni0.5Zn0.5)Fe2O4 ferromagnetic sol-gel precursor prepared via a sol-gel wet chemistry process. The composite ceramics show coexistence of obvious ferroelectric and ferromagnetic hysteresis loops at room temperature. Very low dielectric loss of about 0.02–0.0067 in the range of 10 kHz–10 MHz can be achieved, which is about an order of magnitude lower than the results of many reports using conventional processes at room temperature. The combination of high permeability and permittivity with low losses in the ceramics enables significant miniaturization of electronic devices based on the ceramics.