Strong self-biased magnetoelectric charge coupling in a homogenous laminate stack for magnetic sensor

In this study, we report a strong self-biased magnetoelectric (ME) charge coupling in homogenous two-phase magnetostrictive/piezoelectric laminate stack. The proposed ME stack Ni/PZT-stack is made up of hard-processing Nickel foils (Ni) and a tape-casting multilayer Pb(Zr, Ti)O3 (PZT) plate with high capacitance. Resonant ME couplings of Ni/PZT-stack with different thickness ratio (n) of Ni foil are investigated in detail. The experimental results show that the Ni/PZT-stack with n = 0.4 has maximum zero-biased resonant ME charge coefficient (αQ,r) of 47.52 nC/Oe, which is far larger higher than that previously reported for other ME laminates. The proposed self-biased miniature ME structure may be useful for multifunctional devices such as electromagnetic energy harvesting, magnetic-to-electric generators or magnet field sensing based on a charge-detection method.