Investigation of a novel MEMS orthogonal fluxgate sensor fabricated with Co-based amorphous ribbon core

Abstract In this paper, we present a novel MEMS orthogonal fluxgate sensor fabricated by standard micro fabricated technology. The sensor mainly consists of a three-dimensional solenoid pick-up coil and a meander-shaped Co-based amorphous ribbon core. The experimental results demonstrate that the sensitivity and noise can be optimized by tuning operation conditions with excitation current amplitude and frequency. The fabricated sensor exhibits a maximum sensitivity of 575 V/T, a wide linear range of ± 480 μT, and a perming below 0.8 μT for 90 mA rms sinusoidal excitation current at 500 kHz frequency. The equivalent magnetic noise is 0.20 nT/√Hz at 1 Hz, and the RMS noise is 1.09 nT in the frequency range of 0.1–10 Hz under the same excitation. In comparison with other micro fabricated fluxgates in similar dimensions, this device possesses relatively high sensitivity and low noise spectral density.

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