Anyfantis, D. I., Sarigiannidou, E., Rapenne, L., Stamatelatos, A., Ntemogiannis, D., Kapaklis, V., Poulopoulos, P..
2019.
Unexpected Development of Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy in Ni/NiO Multilayers After Mild Thermal Annealing. IEEE Magnetics Letters. 10:1–5.
We report on the significant enhancement of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of Ni/NiO multilayers after mild annealing up to 90 min at 250 °C. Transmission electron microscopy shows that after annealing, a partial crystallization of the initially amorphous NiO layers occurs. This turns out to be the source of the anisotropy enhancement. Magnetic measurements reveal that even multilayers with Ni layers as thick as 7 nm, which in the as-deposited state showed inplane anisotropy with square hysteresis loops, show reduced in-plane remanence after thermal treatment. Hysteresis loops recorded with the field in the normal-to-film-plane direction provide evidence for perpendicular magnetic anisotropy with up and down magnetic domains at remanence. A plot of effective uniaxial magnetic anisotropy constant times individual Ni layer thickness as a function of individual Ni layer thickness shows a large change in the slope of the data attributed to a drastic change of volume anisotropy. Surface anisotropy showed a small decrease because of some layer roughening introduced by annealing.
Beran, P., Klöhn, M., Hohe, H..
2019.
Measurement Characteristics of Different Integrated Three-Dimensional Magnetic Field Sensors. IEEE Magnetics Letters. 10:1–5.
Datasheets of different commercially available integrated sensors for vector measurements of magnetic fields provide typical specifications, such as measurement range, sampling rate, resolution, and noise. Other characteristics of interest, such as linearity, cross-sensitivity, remanent magnetization, and drifts over temperature, are mostly missing. This letter presents testing results of those characteristics of integrated three-dimensional (3-D) sensors working with different sensor principles and technologies in a reproducible measuring process. The sensors are exposed to temperatures from -20 °C to 80 °C and are cycled in hysteresis loops in fields up to 2.5 mT. For applying high-accuracy magnetic fields, a calibrated 3-D Helmholtz coil setup is used. Commercially available integrated 3-D magnetic field sensors are put in operation on a printed circuit board using nonmagnetic passive components. All sensors are configured for best measurement accuracy according to their data-sheets. The results show that sensors based on anisotropic magnetoresistance have high accuracy and low offsets yet also a high degree of nonlinearity. Hall-based sensors show good linearity but also high cross-sensitivity. A magnetic remanence appears for Hall-based sensors with integrated magnetic concentrators as well as for sensors using anisotropic magnetoresistance. Nearly all sensors show remaining drifts over temperature regarding offset and sensitivity up to several percentages.