Progress in multiferroic and magnetoelectric materials: applications, opportunities and challenges

The development of electronic technology is flexibly related to the progresses made in material science. Functional materials out of the broad class of materials available today offer unique chance for developing novel components and devices. In this framework, provides a new class of functional materials, the multiferroics (MFs), combine two or more different ferroic orders (viz. ferroelectric, ferromagnetic and ferroelastic) in a single phase and are utilized in a broad range of systems. In connection with multiferroism, a broad category of materials namely magnetoelectrics allow the electric control on magnetization or vice-versa are explored extensively. Even though, the research in the field of MFs and magnetoelectric (ME) materials can be traced back to revolutionary research in the early 1950s. There has been a contemporary resurgence of concern motivation by long-term technological aspirations. The center of attention of this review is on elementary understanding of the MFs and ME materials using a multidisciplinary approach to address the underlying mechanism responsible for the coupling, their applications in some novel devices, new opportunities and future challenges.