Magnetoresistive (MR) sensors have been identified as promising candidates for the development of high-performance magnetometers due to their high sensitivity, low cost, low power consumption, and small size. The rapid advance of MR sensor technology has opened up a variety of MR sensor applications. These applications are in different areas that require MR sensors with different properties. Future MR sensor development in each of these areas requires an overview and a strategic guide. A MR sensor roadmap (non-recording applications) was therefore developed and made public by the Technical Committee of The IEEE Magnetics Society with the aim to provide an R&D guide for MR sensors intended to be used by industry, government, and academia. The roadmap was developed over a three-year period and coordinated by an international effort of 22 taskforce members from 10 countries and 17 organizations, including universities, research institutes, and sensor companies. In this paper, the current status of MR sensors for non-recording

Large area MTJs with linear response and very larger sensitivities are needed to fulfill the requirements for the detection of pT/Hz magnetic fields at low frequency and room temperature. MTJ stacks with soft-pinned sensing layers have been developed and the stack was optimized, providing a tunable soft-pinning field over a large range of values. Sensitivities corresponding to resistance changes of up to 7%/Oe are obtained in patterned MTJs with areas of 20 20 m starting from films with high sensitivity soft-pinned layers made from 3.0 Co Fe B /0.21 Ta/8.0 Ni Fe /8.0 Ir Mn . Index Terms-Linear magnetic tunnel junctions, magnetoresistive sensors, 1/f noise.

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Single phase BaTi03 thin films were prepared by metal-organic deposition (MOD) using barium 2-ethylhexanoate and titanium dimethoxy dineodecanoate as the metal-organic precursors. A series of experiments was conducted on the metal-organic spin-coated films and their correspondingly annealed samples by employing experimental techniques ranging from thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), x-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), to various optical property characterization methods. A better understanding has been achieved regarding the metal-organic decomposition mechanism, the solid-state BaTi03 film formation and crystallization process, as well as the relationship between the structure and the optical properties of the prepared films. The conclusions of our experiments are as follows: Upon annealing the barium 2-ethylhexanoate spin-coated films, barium carbonate (BaC03) is formed at a relatively low temperature of 300 °C, and at an annealing temperature around 700 °C forms the barium peroxymonocarbonate (BaCO4). Upon annealing the titanium dimethoxy dineodecanoate spin-coated films, anatase is first formed at a low annealing temperature about 400 °C and transforms to rutile phase around an annealing temperature of 800 °C. Upon annealing the spin-coated films from the equimolar mixture of barium 2-ethylhexanoate and titanium dimethoxy dineodecanoate formulations, BaTi03 is formed around an annealing temperature of 600 °C via solid-state reaction between BaCO3 and TiO2 (anatase). The structure of MOD prepared BaTiO3 films has several specific features: instead of the columnar structure in physical vapor deposited (PVD) films, the crystal grains in granular shape are characteristic of MOD films, and the crystallites are much larger near the surface of the film than near the substrates. Optical properties of the prepared BaTi03 films have been reported. Optical characterization shows that the scattering losses contribute dominantly to the total optical losses. The relationship between the structure and the optical properties of the prepared films has also been discussed.

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