Giant magnetoelectric coefficients in (Fe90Co10)78Si12B10-AlN thin film composites

Abstract

Thin film magnetoelectric (ME) two–two composites consisting of AlN and amorphous (Fe90Co10)78Si12B10 layers were fabricated by magnetron sputtering on Si (100) substrates. Upon magnetic field annealing they show an extremely high ME coefficient of 737 V/cm Oe at mechanical resonance at 753 Hz and 3.1 V/cm Oe out of resonance at 100 Hz. These are the highest reported ME coefficients in thin film composites ever. Furthermore, the induced magnetic anisotropy by field annealing serves the possibility to obtain a sensor element with a pronounced sensitivity in only one dimension, which allows the realization of a three-dimensional vector field sensor.