Highly compliant planar Hall effect sensor with sub 200 nT sensitivity

Abstract

Highly sensitive compliant magnetic field sensor joins family Magnetic field sensors are useful in remote sensing and now they are made more compliant and sensitive to meet the requirement for on-skin electronics. A group of international researchers led by Dr Denys Makarov from Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., Dresden, Germany developed flexible and highly sensitive magnetic field sensors relying on planar Hall effect. The key idea is to make Hall bar devices on thin polymer foils which enables superior detectivity below 200 nT while maintaining sensitivity on par with their rigid counterparts. Remarkably, the devices show no degradation in its electrical resistance or linearity behavior upon repeated bending. Based on these highly robust and compliant devices, they demonstrate direction and distance sensors of magnetically functionalized objects, which complement electronic and pressure sensors well and hold great potential for conformal low-field applications.