Magnetostatic Modeling Of An Integrated Microconcentrator

We report on numerical simulations of a ferromagnetic microconcentrator using the Finite Element Method (FEM). This permalloy structure captures external mag netic flux and concentrates it within the sensitive region of a magnetotransistor in order to increase the magnetic response of the complete microsystem. Good agreement is found between simulation and experimental results, which show an enhancement of the magnetic induction B in the magnetotransistor by more than one order of magnitude, Enlargement of the relative permeability of the permalloly and an increase of the concentrator thickness improve the relative magnetic sensitivity and the linearity range of the sensor response.