Innovative AMR based magnetometer for space application : Simulation and Characterization of a multilayer solution

Abstract: During the recent years, the space technology trend was pointing towards the miniaturization of all its components in order to achieve a smaller and lightweight satellite with low power and low noise components. A possible solution to this request can be given by the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) based sensors which present good miniaturizability and low power consumption. The objective of this thesis is to study and characterize a Planar Hall E ect Bridge (PHEB) AMR sensor in order to understand if this type of technology can meet the strict performance requirements imposed for a space application. One of the techniques used to improve the detectivity of our sensor was to increase the thickness of the FM layer in order to reduce the resistance of the device which required to used a double bias layer of AFM material in order to avoid demagnetization e ects inside the FM layer. An other advanced technological solution used to reduce the resistance of the devices is to stack multilayer of AFM-FM materials in order to obtain a multilayer sensor composed of different sensors working in parallel. The main focus on this thesis was to perform multiphysics simulations and measurement characterization of those two solutions and to integrate the sensor on a PCB in order to demonstrate the feasibility to use.