Concurrent Inverse Effects of Magnetostriction and Piezoelectricity in Magnetoelectric-Layered Structures

Internal inverse effects of magnetostriction and piezoelectricity are conceptually introduced for a laterally wide magnetostrictive-piezoelectric-layered structure and studied for a cubic polycrystalline ferromagnetic layer bonded to an out-of-laminate plane-poled piezoelectric. It is shown that these concurrent effects may crucially contribute to the mechanism of magnetoelectric (ME) coupling over that known from previous analytical modeling. It is shown that the studied effect gives rise to an additional magnetic anisotropy in each specific ferromagnetic crystallite. This excess anisotropy has non-cubic symmetry and depends on the orientation of the crystallite's local crystallographic frame relative to the frame set by the laminate geometry. We explain the saturation lag in the magnetization curve as compared to the corresponding standalone ferromagnetic layer. Our consideration provides useful insight into the fundamental issue of the strain-mediated ME coupling.