Not-plate-like Hall magnetic sensors and their applications

This paper is a survey of a new class of Hall devices which are not plate-l ike but have three-dimensional structures. The survey covers: the vertical Hall device, sensitive to a magnetic field parallel with the chip surface; the cylindrical Hall device, which behaves as a vertical Hall device combin ed with magnetic flux concentrators; the two-axis vertical Hall device, for the two in-chip-plane components of a magnetic field: and the three-axis H all device, to measure all three components of a magnetic field. All these Hall magnetic sensors an fabricated using the "vertical Hall" silicon proce ss and feature low supply current, low noise, and high long-term stability. Their applications include: high-accuracy magnetometry, long-range positio n sensing, angular position sensing, current sensing, magnetic scanning of documents, and more. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.