Planar Hall Resistance Sensor for Monitoring Current

Recent years have seen an increasing range of planar Hall resistive (PHR) sensor applications in the field of magnetic sensing. This study describes a new application of the PHR sensor to monitor a current. Initially, thermal drift experiments of the PHR sensor are performed, to determine the accuracy of the PHR signal output. The results of the thermal drift experiments show that there is no considerable drift in the signals attained from 0.1, 0.5, 1 and 2 mA current. Consequently, the PHR sensor provides adequate accuracy of the signal output, to perform the current monitoring experiments. The performances of the PHR sensor with bilayer and trilayer structures are then tested. The minimum detectable currents of the PHR sensor using bilayer and trilayer structures are $0.51{\mu}A$ and 54 nA, respectively. Therefore, the PHR sensor having trilayer structure is the better choice to detect ultra low current of few tens nanoampere.