Ballistic effects up to room temperature in microscopic Hall sensors

Abstract

The Hall resistance of small Hall sensors and its nonlinear dependence on magnetic field B were investigated at the temperature of 4.2 K. The sensors were four-terminal crosses fabricated by etching AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs δ-doped heterostructures. While large sensors exhibit good linearity of the Hall voltage on magnetic field, in sensors smaller than 5 μm we detected pronounced nonlinearities for magnetic fields between 0 and 2 T. We attribute the latter to ballistic corrections to the classical Hall effect, and we model the Hall and the bend resistances at low temperature using Monte Carlo simulation. We also carried out temperature studies of the Hall sensors. We show that the nonlinearities persist up to room temperature. The effect of nonlinearities on the performance of Hall sensors is discussed.