Observation of abnormal magnetoelectric behavior in 0-3 type CoFe2O4–BaTiO3 nanocomposites

Herein we report an example of xCoFe2O4/(1 − x)BaTiO3 composites formed in 0-3 type structure, which exhibit abnormal magnetic field-dependent magnetoelectric behaviors different from those reported previously. The magnetoelectric response of the composites with x ≤ 0.4 is found to undergo a minor change upon the dc bias magnetic field. However, when the BaTiO3 content is decreased to the extent x = 0.5, the magnetoelectric response exhibits a staircase-like dependence on the dc magnetic field with a sudden decrease at around 2.5 kOe. We propose another possible mechanism to explain the field-dependent magnetoelectric behaviors of our CoFe2O4/BaTiO3 composites.