Electret integrated magnetic field sensor based on magnetostrictive polymer composite with nT resolution

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Sensor Technology
• Physics

Background:

• Advanced magnetoelectric field sensors are crucial for biomedical, robotics, and automotive applications.
• Existing sensors often lack comprehensive magnetic characterization.
• Magnetostrictive polymer composites (MPCs) offer tunable properties for sensor development.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a novel capacitive read-out based MPC sensor element.
• Characterize the magnetic properties of the MPC sensor comprehensively.
• Improve the limit of detection (LoD) for magnetic field sensing.

Main Methods:

• Development of a capacitive read-out based MPC sensor element.
• Independent tailoring of mechanical and magnetic properties of the sensor.
• Comprehensive magnetic characterization of the sensor performance.

Main Results:

• Achieved a limit of detection (LoD) of 95.6 nT/√Hz at 160.5 Hz, three orders of magnitude lower than other composite sensors.
• Reduced LoD by a factor of 20 compared to electret-based magnetoelectric (ME) sensors.
• Demonstrated the first comprehensive magnetic characterization of an MPC sensor.

Conclusions:

• The developed MPC sensor offers a versatile and tuneable platform for magnetic field detection.
• The sensor exhibits superior sensitivity and a significantly improved LoD.
• This work establishes a benchmark for characterizing novel MPC magnetic field sensors.