Bulk metallic glass for low noise fluxgate, Phase I

The team of Prime Photonics, Virginia Tech, and Utron Kinetics propose to demonstrate a method for fabrication of a bulk, amorphous, cobalt-rich material that demonstrates low-noise magnetic properties, superior to those of the 6-81.3 Mo-Permalloy family. In particular, bulk cobalt-rich amorphous materials will provide increased permeability, tunable Curie temperature, highly controlled coercivity and saturation inductance, all without the introduction of magnetostrictive-based excess noise. The bulk nature of the material will provide an unprecedented degree of freedom in core geometry design over existing ribbon-form amorphous alloys, allowing for near-net shapes of densified compacts. The combined effect of these enhcancements will be to increase fluxgate sensitivity, decrease offset and noise, and allow for new, smaller geometries in fluxgate magnetometers. More »