A quasistatic hysteresis model for magnetoelectric effect in multiferroic nanostructured films with surface effect

The investigation of hysteresis induced self-biased magnetoelectric (ME) coupling in multiferroic nanostructured films is significant for self-biased nano-devices. In this paper, we propose a quasistatic hysteresis model for ME effect in multiferroic nanostructured films based on surface stress model and multi-field coupled hysteretic constitutive model. For an asymmetric structure consisting of different magnetostrictive phases, the flexural strain is considered in the theoretical model. It is revealed that ME coupling in ME composites with nano-scale thickness is significantly size-dependent below critical size, which is enhanced by surface effect. Self-biased ME hysteretic behavior can be observed by considering the hysteretic effect of magnetostrictive materials, resulting in a large ME voltage coefficient in absence of bias magnetic field. The self-biased ME voltage coefficient is affected by pre-stress and thermal variation due to the complex magneto-elastic-thermal coupling characteristics of constituent materials. The proposed model provides a method to analyze and evaluate the nonlinear ME coupling characteristics of self-biased nano-devices operating under extreme stress or temperature conditions.