Planar Hall effect bridge magnetic field sensors

Abstract

Until now, the planar Hall effect has been studied in samples with cross-shaped Hall geometry. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that the planar Hall effect can be observed for an exchange-biased ferromagnetic material in a Wheatstone bridge topology and that the sensor signal can be significantly enhanced by a geometric factor. For the samples in the present study, we demonstrate an enhancement of the sensor output by a factor of about 100 compared to cross-shaped sensors. The presented construction opens a new design and application area of the planar Hall effect, which we term planar Hall effect bridge sensors.