Novel magnetic nanostructured multilayer for high sensitive magnetoresistive sensor

The magnetic properties of the soft ferromagnetic layer in magnetic tunnel junctions are one of key factors to determine the performance of magnetoresistive sensor. In this paper, we compare two magnetic tunnel junctions with different free layer thicknesses that have very different magnetic characters, such as magnetization reversal behavior, magnetic corecivity, magnetic saturation field, and tunnel magnetoresistance ratio etc. In this study, we show a sensor with a sensitivity as high as 1916 %/mT. This magnetic sensor only dissipates 20 μW of power while operating under an applied voltage of 1 V.