Single magnetic bead detection in a microfluidic chip using planar hall effect sensor

In this study, we fabricate an integrated microfluidic chip with a planar Hall effect (PHE) sensor for single magnetic bead detection. The PHE sensor was constructed with a junction size of 10 μm × 10 μm using a trilayer structure of Ta(3 nm)/NiFe(10 nm)/Cu(1.2 nm)/IrMn(10 nm)/Ta(3 nm). The sensitivity of the PHE sensor was 19.86 μV/Oe. A diameter of 8.18 μm magnetic beads was used, of which the saturation magnetization was ~2.1 emu/g. The magnetic susceptibility χ of these magnetic beads was calculated to be ~0.14. The diluted magnetic beads solution was introduced to the microfluidic channel attributing a single bead flow and simultaneously the PHE sensor voltage was measured to be 0.35 μV. The integrated microchip was able to detect a magnetic moment of 1.98 × 10^-10 emu.