High efficiency passive magnetoelectric transducer consisting of PZT and Fe-Ni fork substrate with high Q value

This paper proposes an H-type magnetoelectric (ME) composite transducer structure consisting of a magnetostrictive Fe-Ni fork substrate and piezoelectric PZT plates. The fork composite structure has a higher ME voltage coefficient and a higher ME power output relative to other ME composite structures due to its higher quality (Q) factor. The ME sensitivity of the fork structure reaches 11V/Oe. The fork composite with two PZT plates electrically connected in series exhibits over 5 times higher than the output of the rectangle structure in the same size. We demonstrate that the composite of a Fe-Ni fork substrate and PZT plates has a significantly enhanced ME voltage coefficient and sensitivity relative to the prior sandwiched laminate composite configurations. By using a lock-in amplifier with a 10nV resolution, this transducer can detect a weak magnetic field of less than 10 −11 T. This transducer can also be designed for a magnetoelectric energy harvester due to its passive high-efficiency ME energy conversion.