Advanced giant magnetoresistance technology for measurement applications

Giant magnetoresistance sensors are considered one of the first real applications of nanotechnology. They consist of nm-thick layered structures where ferromagnetic metals are sandwiched by nonmagnetic metals. Such multilayered films produce a large change in resistance (typically 10 to 20%) when subjected to a magnetic field, compared with a maximum change of a few percent for other types of magnetic sensors. This technology has been intensively used in read heads for hard disk drives and now increasingly finds applications due to the high sensitivity and signal to noise ratio. Additionally these sensors are compatible with miniaturization and thus offer a high spatial resolution combined with a frequency range up to the 100MHz regime and simple electronic conditioning. In this article, we first discuss the basics of the underlying magnetoresistance-effects in layered structures and then present three prominent examples for future applications: in the field of current sensing the new GMR sensors offer high bandwidth and good accuracy in a space-saving open loop measurement configuration. In rotating systems, they can be used for multi-turn angle measurements and in biotechnology the detection of magnetic particles enables the quantitative measurement of biomolecule concentrations.