An experimental insight of the multiferroic properties of magnetoelectrically coupled xLNCZFO+(1−x)BSTDO composites

•xLNCZFO + (1 − x)BSTDO composites are synthesized by solid state reaction route.•Structural Characteristics confirm the existence of a bi-phase composition.•Conduction phenomenon is due to small polaron hopping.•Impedance spectra revealed semicircular arcs due to grain and grain boundary resistance.•The ME coefficient is very large for the 0.1LNCZFO + 0.9BSTDO composition. The conventional solid-state reaction method was used to synthesize the xLi0.1Ni0.3Cu0.1Zn0.4Fe2.1O4+(1−x)Ba0.95Sm0.05Ti0.95Dy0.05O3 multiferroic composites. X-ray diffraction patterns confirmed the coexistence of the constituent phases in the composites. Field Emission Scanning Microscopy images showed that the average grain size increased with the ferrite content in composites. The compositional study confirmed that the proportion of the components is well compatible with their nominal compositions. The real part of the initial permeability was found to increase, but the magnetic loss decreased with ferrite content. The dielectric dispersion was observed at lower frequencies on account of interfacial polarization. The maximum dielectric constant of about 6.7 × 103 was found for the value of x = 0.60 at 1 kHz. The ac conductivity followed the Jonscher’s power law, and the conduction was due to the small polaron hopping. The impedance spectroscopy analysis confirmed that both the grains and grain boundaries affected the conduction for samples with x = 0.40, 0.50 and 0.60, while only grain boundary was the dominating factor for the other samples. Polarization-electric field curves (P-E) confirmed that the samples up to x = 0.20 had a good ferroelectric nature with a maximum saturation polarization of 0.34 µC/cm2 and the rest had lossy behavior. The highest magnetoelectric (ME) voltage coefficient was found to be 170 × 103 Vm−1T−1 for x = 0.10.