中文摘要：

多铁体（multiferroic）和磁电体（magnetoelectrie material）最近几年已迅速成为物理界和材料界的研究热点，其潜在的应用价值必将随着未来的深入研究而得到进一步展现。围绕磁电效应这一多铁体和磁电体最重要的特性，本文介绍了近期理论和实验研究的多方面进展，其中重点评述了有关磁电效应产生机制，特别是一些新颖机制如界面磁电效应，表面磁电效应，电子型多铁性，螺旋白旋（spiral spin）铁电性，铁涡性（ferrotoroidic）和一些广义磁电效应如拓扑磁电效应等的相关研究。文章最后介绍了基于多铁体和磁电体的一些新型功能性器件，如四态存储器，多铁性内存，磁读电写硬盘等。

英文摘要：

Multiferroic and magnetoelectric materials have rapidly become a new research frontier of physics and material science in recent years. The importance of these materials will inevitably be further unfolded by future deeper researches. Focusing on the magnetoelectrie effect, the most important property of multiferroic and magnetoelectrie materials, this review will introduce the most recent advances in the experimental and theoretical studies on this field. Special emphasis is given to the mechanisms of magnetoeleetric effects, especially those novel mechanisms such as interface and surface magnetoelectric effect, electronic multiferroic, spiral spin ferroelectricity, ferrotoroidic and some generalized magnetoelectric effects such as topological magnetoelectric effect. Finally, some cutting-edge functional devices based on multiferroic and magnetoelectric materials, including four-state storage and multiferroic memory, electrically-writing and magnetically-reading hard-disk, are introduced.