Physics Commons^™

Study Of Magnetic Layers In Magnetic Sensors, Lu Yuan

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Interest in highly sensitive magnetic sensors has been great due to their wide applications ranging from data storage to geomagnetic exploration. To achieve better performance, magnetic sensors are usually fabricated with micrometer-sized or submicrometer-sized multilayer structures. The thickness of each layer can be as thin as a few angstroms. The magnetic properties of these small and thin layers are quite different from those of the bulk. As the size of the magnetic devices shrinks and the thickness of the ferromagnetic films decreases, the chance of having defects becomes higher. Those defects may be formed during thin film deposition, annealing and …