New slant on old technology

A team of researchers led by Dr. Paul Robertson at Cambridge University’s Engineering Department are working on a new slant to an old sensing technology.

Flux-gate magnetic sensors have been around for many decades and are still used today for tasks such as geological surveys, aerospace instruments and even detecting submarines, as submarines disturb the Earth's magnetic field around them.

These devices are usually quite large and are assembled from coils wound on to magnetic cores.

Dr. Robertson and his team, though, have developed new techniques to micro-fabricate flux-gate magnetic sensors, producing tiny versions of these sensors which are extremely sensitive, contained in a miniature package and able to work over a wide frequency range

These properties allow the sensors to be used in a range of new applications including the measurement of electrical currents in circuits and the evaluation of the magnetic properties of materials - both of which can be achieved in a non-destructive manner.