Abstract
The vacuum-annealed Ni80Fe20/Ag discontinuous multilayers were found to show giant magnetoresistive behaviors comparable to those of corresponding multilayers annealed at atmospheric pressure in a mixture of H2 and Ar. This vacuum-annealing process will offer potential advantages, enabling a continuous batch process from the deposition to the annealing. Their giant magnetoresistive behaviors were attributed to the magnetostatic coupling that are induced at the edges of the discontinuous magnetic grains. We also present our results about the multilayer patterned into a basic device for the magnetic field sensor.
