Permanent magnets are used in a variety of ways and increasingly in technical products, above all for data storage, in energy technology, in sensor technology, and for transport and separation processes. This large market is mostly served by rare earth magnets (e.g. NdFeB) or by ferrite-based materials (e.g. barium hexaferrites), with the rare earth magnets having the best magnetic properties and the ferrites being the least expensive. The limited availability of rare-earth metals has increased pressure to search for alternative, rare-earth-free magnetic materials, as well as process technology options to control magnetic anisotropy through nanostructuring. For many new products, scalability of magnetic components down to the submillimeter field is critical.

Hard magnetic materials, which are used in magnetic MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) e.g. as actuators in energy harvesting systems, as a magnetic saturation source in magnetic field sensors (as a replacement for electromagnets), or as magnetic scales in position measuring systems, require an IC/CMOS compatible manufacturing process in order to achieve an economic advantage over common hard magnetic materials such as NbFeB, SmCo or hard ferrites.

This is where the planned project comes in. Using hard magnetic Co alloys as an example, the magnetic performance potential is to be adjusted for magnetic field sensor technology by specifically influencing the anisotropy. 

Magnetic field sensors can be used to measure or detect geometric quantities such as distance and position or even defects in materials. Materials with different magnetic properties are combined to fulfill the function. The increasing demands on micromagnetic sensors and measuring systems in terms of reduced space requirements/minaturization, higher accuracy and sensitivity as well as areas of application in industrial environments require not only integrable manufacturing processes but also increased demands on the materials.

Electrochemical deposition with an external current source ("electroplating") from aqueous solutions is to be used as the manufacturing process for the materials and components. This is a scalable, integrable and, in principle, simple, i.e. also cost-effective process which, in conjunction with known and industrially used structuring processes such as lithography, permits arbitrary 2.5 D geometries even with relatively thick layer heights. This results in nanocrystalline materials that exhibit specific magnetic properties depending on their composition and material structure. By a specific influencing of the nanoscale grains as well as a nanostructuring (nanowires), the materials shall be adjusted with regard to their magnetic properties in connection with the microstructuring of the components specific to the application.