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Updated: Oct 17, 2025

Additive Manufacturing-Enabled Low-Cost Particle Detector
Published on: March 24, 2023
Design of a Low-Cost Small-Size Fluxgate Sensor
Xiaoyu Shen1, Yuntian Teng1, Xingxing Hu1
1Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration, No. 5 Minzudaxue Nanlu, Haidian District, Beijing 100081, China.
Abstract:
Traditional fluxgate sensors used in geomagnetic field observations are large, costly, power-consuming and often limited in their use. Although the size of the micro-fluxgate sensors has been significantly reduced, their performance, including indicators such as accuracy and signal-to-noise, does not meet observational requirements. To address these problems, a new race-track type probe is designed based on a magnetic core made of a Co-based amorphous ribbon. The size of this single-component probe is only Φ10 mm × 30 mm. The signal processing circuit is also optimized. The whole size of the sensor integrated with probes and data acquisition module is Φ70 mm × 100 mm. Compared with traditional fluxgate and micro-fluxgate sensors, the designed sensor is compact and provides excellent performance equal to traditional fluxgate sensors with good linearity and RMS noise of less than 0.1 nT. From operational tests, the results are in good agreement with those from a standard fluxgate magnetometer. Being more suitable for modern dense deployment of geomagnetic observations, this small-size fluxgate sensor offers promising research applications at lower costs.

