Giant magnetostrictive spring magnet type multilayers

Thin film magnetostrictive materials can be extremely useful as the active material in microactuators. In this article, some results on a novel type of multilayer structure which combines exchange coupled giant magnetostrictive materials and materials with large magnetic polarizations are presented for the first time. Giant magnetostrictions are achieved at low fields, due to the polarization enhancement in such multilayers. Therefore such composite materials should be much more appropriate for applications than the simple homogeneous alloy films studied up to now. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.