Understanding strong magnetostriction in Fe(100-x)Ga(x) alloys

Anisotropy in magnetic materials for sensors and actuators in soft robotic systems

The field of soft intelligent robots has rapidly developed, revealing extensive potential of these robots for real-world applications. By mimicking the dexterities of organisms, robots can handle delicate objects, access remote areas, and provide valuable feedback on their interactions with different environments. For autonomous manipulation of soft robots, which exhibit nonlinear behaviors and infinite degrees of freedom in transformation, innovative control systems integrating flexible and highly compliant sensors should be developed. Accordingly, sensor-actuator feedback systems are a key strategy for precisely controlling robotic motions. The introduction of material magnetism into soft robotics offers significant advantages in the remote manipulation of robotic operations, including touch or touchless detection of dynamically changing shapes and positions resulting from the actuations of robots. Notably, the anisotropies in the magnetic nanomaterials facilitate the perception and response with highly selective, directional, and efficient ways used for both sensors and actuators. Accordingly, this review provides a comprehensive understanding of the origins of magnetic anisotropy from both intrinsic and extrinsic factors and summarizes diverse magnetic materials with enhanced anisotropy. Recent developments in the design of flexible sensors and soft actuators based on the principle of magnetic anisotropy are outlined, specifically focusing on their applicabilities in soft robotic systems. Finally, this review addresses current challenges in the integration of sensors and actuators into soft robots and offers promising solutions that will enable the advancement of intelligent soft robots capable of efficiently executing complex tasks relevant to our daily lives.

Magneto-Mechano-Electric (MME) Composite Devices for Energy Harvesting and Magnetic Field Sensing Applications

Magneto-mechano-electric (MME) composite devices have been used in energy harvesting and magnetic field sensing applications due to their advantages including their high-performance, simple structure, and stable properties. Recently developed MME devices can convert stray magnetic fields into electric signals, thus generating an output power of over 50 mW and detecting ultra-tiny magnetic fields below pT. These inherent outstanding properties of MME devices can enable the development of not only self-powered energy harvesters for internet of thing (IoT) systems but also ultra-sensitive magnetic field sensors for diagnosis of human bio-magnetism or others. This manuscript provides a brief overview of recently reported high-performance MME devices for energy harvesting and magnetic sensing applications.

The emergence of high room temperature in-plane and out-of-plane magnetostriction in polycrystalline CoFe2O4 film

The polycrystalline CoFe₂O₄ (CFO) film on cantilever substrate of silicon was grown using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method and investigated its in-plane and out-of-plane magnetostrictive strain at room temperature (300 K) using the indigenous optical Cantilever Beam Magnetometer (CBM). The film shows a high compressive magnetostrictive strain of ‒ 387 ppm and ‒ 708 ppm for in-plane and out-of-plane configurations, respectively. Considerably, the magnetostrictive strain loops (λ‒H) possess a certain degree of hysteresis with a symmetric butterfly shape. The origin of large compressive magnetostriction of CFO film is attributed to the non-180° domain wall motion followed by 90° domain rotation. The large values of saturation magnetostrictive strain make CFO film a suitable candidate in sensor design for different purposes.

Engineering new limits to magnetostriction through metastability in iron-gallium alloys

Magnetostrictive materials transduce magnetic and mechanical energies and when combined with piezoelectric elements, evoke magnetoelectric transduction for high-sensitivity magnetic field sensors and energy-efficient beyond-CMOS technologies. The dearth of ductile, rare-earth-free materials with high magnetostrictive coefficients motivates the discovery of superior materials. Fe_1-xGa_x alloys are amongst the highest performing rare-earth-free magnetostrictive materials; however, magnetostriction becomes sharply suppressed beyond x = 19% due to the formation of a parasitic ordered intermetallic phase. Here, we harness epitaxy to extend the stability of the BCC Fe_1-xGa_x alloy to gallium compositions as high as x = 30% and in so doing dramatically boost the magnetostriction by as much as 10x relative to the bulk and 2x larger than canonical rare-earth based magnetostrictors. A Fe_1-xGa_x - [Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃]_0.7-[PbTiO₃]_0.3 (PMN-PT) composite magnetoelectric shows robust 90° electrical switching of magnetic anisotropy and a converse magnetoelectric coefficient of 2.0 × 10^-5 s m^-1. When optimally scaled, this high coefficient implies stable switching at ~80 aJ per bit.

Multiferroic heterostructures for spintronics

For next-generation technology, magnetic systems are of interest due to the natural ability to store information and, through spin transport, propagate this information for logic functions. Controlling the magnetization state through currents has proven energy inefficient. Multiferroic thin-film heterostructures, combining ferroelectric and ferromagnetic orders, hold promise for energy efficient electronics. The electric field control of magnetic order is expected to reduce energy dissipation by 2–3 orders of magnitude relative to the current state-of-the-art. The coupling between electrical and magnetic orders in multiferroic and magnetoelectric thin-film heterostructures relies on interfacial coupling though magnetic exchange or mechanical strain and the correlation between domains in adjacent functional ferroic layers. We review the recent developments in electrical control of magnetism through artificial magnetoelectric heterostructures, domain imprint, emergent physics and device paradigms for magnetoelectric logic, neuromorphic devices, and hybrid magnetoelectric/spin-current-based applications. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of experiments that probe the crucial dynamics of the magnetoelectric switching and optical tuning of ferroelectric states towards all-optical control of magnetoelectric switching events.

MAELASviewer: An Online Tool to Visualize Magnetostriction

The design of new materials for technological applications is increasingly being assisted by online computational tools that facilitate the study of their properties. In this work, based on modern web application frameworks, the online app MAELASviewer has been developed to visualize and analyze magnetostriction via a user-friendly interactive graphical interface. The features and technical details of this new tool are described in detail. Among other applications, it could potentially be used for the design of magnetostrictive materials for sensors and actuators.

Electric-field control of spin orientation of manganocene: An insight into molecule-substrate interactions

The manipulation of spin orientations in molecular nanomagnets assembled on surfaces is essential for the development of memory devices. These properties are dominated by interactions with the substrate. Here, we show that individual manganocene molecules deposited on Cu(111) exhibit different easy magnetization directions in an applied electric-field due to different contact geometries. Using Hubbard-U corrected density-functional theory to describe strong correlation effects and a non-self-consistent diagonalization method to treat spin-orbit coupling, we demonstrate that the field-induced spin reorientation transition occurs in the standing-up molecule in both high-spin (HS) and low-spin states, while the transition only occurs in the HS state for the flat-lying molecule. We propose plausible mechanisms in terms of charge polarization at the interface as well as modifications of the electronic states near the Fermi level E _F. We show that the molecule largely preserves its arrangement of 3d orbitals in the standing configuration due to the "insulating layer" (bridging ligand), whereas direct contact of the Mn ion with the substrate in the lying configuration induces an orbital degeneracy around E _F, thus preventing the electrical modulation of magnetic anisotropies.

Ab initio study of magnetic and structural properties of Fe-Ga alloys

The structural and magnetic properties for a series of Fe100-xGax alloys (x = 18 – 30 at.%) are studied in the framework of first-principles calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. The both, general gradient approximation and local density approximation are considered for the exchange-correlation functional. The ground state ab initio calculations are performed for both D03 and L12 crystal structures. It is shown that for general gradient approximation, the optimized lattice parameters and total magnetic moments are found in the better agreement with experimental ones. Using the calculated exchange coupling constants for studied compositions, Curie temperatures are estimated by means of Monte Carlo simulations of Heisenberg Hamiltonian.

Computational methods for 2D materials: discovery, property characterization, and application design

The discovery of two-dimensional (2D) materials comes at a time when computational methods are mature and can predict novel 2D materials, characterize their properties, and guide the design of 2D materials for applications. This article reviews the recent progress in computational approaches for 2D materials research. We discuss the computational techniques and provide an overview of the ongoing research in the field. We begin with an overview of known 2D materials, common computational methods, and available cyber infrastructures. We then move onto the discovery of novel 2D materials, discussing the stability criteria for 2D materials, computational methods for structure prediction, and interactions of monolayers with electrochemical and gaseous environments. Next, we describe the computational characterization of the 2D materials' electronic, optical, magnetic, and superconducting properties and the response of the properties under applied mechanical strain and electrical fields. From there, we move on to discuss the structure and properties of defects in 2D materials, and describe methods for 2D materials device simulations. We conclude by providing an outlook on the needs and challenges for future developments in the field of computational research for 2D materials.

Investigating enhanced mechanical properties in dual-phase Fe-Ga-Tb alloys

Dual-phase (Fe₈₃Ga₁₇)_100−xTb_x alloys with 0 ≤ x ≤ 1 were synthesized by arc melting and homogenization treatment. The microstructures and the corresponding mechanical properties were systematically investigated. The chemical composition of the body centered cubic matrix is Fe₈₃Ga₁₇. The monoclinic second phase was composed of meltable precipitates with approximate composition Fe₅₇Ga₃₃Tb₁₀. The nano-hardness of matrix and precipitates were 2.55 ± 0.17 GPa and 6.81 ± 1.03 GPa, respectively. Both the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and fracture strain (ε) of the alloys were improved by the precipitates for x ≤ 0.2 alloys, but the strain decreases significantly at higher values of x. As potential structural-functional materials, the best mechanical properties obtained were a UTS of 595 ± 10 MPa and an ε of 3.5 ± 0.1%, four-fold and seven-fold improvements compared with the un-doped alloy. The mechanism for these anomalous changes of mechanical properties was attributed to the dispersed precipitates and semi-coherent interfaces, which serve as strong obstacles to dislocation motion and reduce the stress concentration at the grain boundaries. A sizeable improvement of magnetostriction induced by the precipitates in the range 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.2 was discovered and an optimal value of 150 ± 5 ppm is found, over three times higher than that of the un-doped alloy.

Determination of the magnetostrictive response of nanoparticles via magnetoelectric measurements

It is successfully demonstrated that nanoparticle's magnetostriction can be accurately determined based on the magnetoelectric effect measured on polymeric composite materials. This represents a novel, simple and versatile method for the determination of particle's magnetostriction at the nano scale and in their dispersed state, which has been, up to now, a difficult and imprecise task.