Highly sensitive Hall sensors

High-performance InGaAs/InAlAs/InP Hall sensors with high magnetic sensitivity, good linearity, low temperature coefficient and high resolution are reported. These sensors use the properties of a two-dimensional electron gas and the benefit of pseudomorphic material, in which both the alloy composition and the built-in strain offer additional degrees of freedom for band structure tailoring. With the described growth optimization of pseudomorphic heterostructures by molecular beam epitaxy, a high electron mobility of 13 000 at room temperature has been obtained. A physical model of the structure including a self-consistent description of the coupled Schrodinger and Poisson equations has been developed to better understand the influence of the design of the heterostructure on its electronic properties. These results have been used in order to optimize the structure design. A magnetic sensitivity of with a temperature coefficient of between and has been obtained, and high signal-to-noise ratios corresponding to minimal magnetic field of at 100 Hz and at 1 kHz have been measured.