Magnetoelectric Resonant Gate Transistor

Chip scale, high sensitivity magnetic sensor arrays capable of sensing below 100 picoTesla vector fields are of great interest to biomedical applications such as noninvasive medical imaging and diagnosis. Here, we present an integrated magnetoelectric resonant gate transistor (ME RGT) with nanoTesla magnetic field detection sensitivity. The device integrates Titanium (Ti)-Metglas (Fe0.85B0.05Si0.1) based magnetostrictive unimorph freestanding cantilever beam coupled capacitively to the gate of an n-channel field effect transistor (FET). Using this configuration at the flexural resonance frequency of 4.9 kHz of the cantilever, a signalto-noise ratio of 646,000√Hz/Oe and a minimum detectable field of 15×10T/√Hz were obtained at room temperature. This result shows a significant improvement in the thin film ME sensor integration with standard CMOS process towards on-chip biomedical imaging applications.