This study evaluates the structural, microstructural, electric and magnetic properties of nickel ferrite samples prepared through the solid state reaction. It was observed that an increase in the sintering temperature produces a higher cation concentration in the A site when compared to the B site. The assessment of magnetic properties showed that an increase in grain size leads to a decrease in the coercive fields verging on superparamagnetic values, while the saturation magnetization increases up to 46.5 Am 2 .kg -1 for samples sintered at 1200 °C. The dc electric resistivity behavior of samples was attributed to the increase in the cross-sectional area of grains as well as the different oxidation states and distribution of cations amongst the lattice sites of the spinel structure.

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Characteristics of phase transitions of lead barium niobate compositions around the morphotropic phase boundary were investigated. Using structural characterizations, it was found that the morphotropic phase boundary extends toward a wide composition range, in which both tetragonal (4mm) and orthorhombic (m2m) tungsten bronze phases coexist. In addition, on heating, two phase transitions were observed for all the studied compositions. First, the fraction with m2m symmetry phase transforms into the 4mm symmetry one and, second, the 4mm symmetry phase, which represents the whole material, transforms into the paraelectric phase (4/mmm symmetry). The phase transition temperatures were determined from dielectric characterizations. These results helped to improve the phase diagram of the pseudobinary PbNb2O6–BaNb2O6 system around the morphotropic phase boundary region.

Tetragonal tungsten bronze-structured materials based on lead metaniobate (PbNb2O6) were studied in terms of thermal dynamics of dielectric properties, showing ferroelectric-to-paraelectric phase transition of diffuse and relaxor type in some specific cases. These features are normally ascribed to defects-induced structural disorder and compositional fluctuations associated with an arbitrary lattice site occupation between dopant and host ions. Nevertheless, for these lead metaniobate-based materials, the drastic change in the phase transition from normal to diffuse and relaxor is shown to take place when dopants are able to significantly shift the transition toward low temperatures, where these compounds are known to exhibit incommensurate superstructures that naturally present diffuse and relaxor dielectric characteristics.

Based on a magnetic relaxation model, an approach that includes the spin dynamics is proposed and applied to describe the magnetoelectric (ME) effect frequency dependence for a 0–3 type composite at low temperatures. Our results show that the ME coefficient, in low temperatures, for PMN-PT/CFO ((1−x)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)−xPbTiO3/CoFe2O4) composite has a step-like behavior on the hysteresis loop for frequency of 1 kHz, contrasting with the results at low frequencies (10 Hz). This approach assumes that the ferromagnetic and ferroelectric phases are coupled through the interactions of the spins of the ferromagnetic phase with the composite phonons by spin/lattice relaxation.