Magnetometer

The magnetometer is also known as a magnetic sensor. It is a sensor for measuring magnetic induction/magnetic field intensity, which is a vital sensor component in all kinds of air and spacecrafts. It is widely utilized in other fields, such as agriculture, national defense, biology, medicine, aerospace, and interplanetary research.

The first magnetometer is thought to be a version designed by German scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1832, a device made up of a permanent magnet suspended in midair by a fiber.

Magnetometers are utilized in geophysical surveys to find iron deposits, since they can measure the magnetic field variations that are caused by the deposits. They are also utilized in detecting shipwrecks and other buried or submerged objects. A towed magnetometer (cesium, overhauser, or technical equivalent) possesses a sensor head that is capable of being towed in a stable position above the seabed.

• $2M DARPA Grant for New Magnetometer Technology—In August 2009, A Department of Materials Science and Engineering professor called Ichiro Takeuchi received a three-year, $2 million grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a proposal titled "MEMS/NEMS Based Multiferroic Magnetic Sensors for Sub-Femto Tesla Detection." The professor's intention was to explore novel ways to construct magnetometers. DARPA's interest was to develop the technology and expand the ability to detect threats like concealed weapons and explosives.

• On the 19th of July, 2018, BEAM-CA, LLC was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant of $149,000 to conduct research and development work on a novel kind of sensitive, robust magnetometer that possesses the ability to operate at room temperature. The company received early support from ExCITE, a startup accelerator partnership between UC Riverside, the City of Riverside, and Riverside County.

• On the 9th of June, 1994, H. Hollis Wickman was awarded $81,000 by the National Science Foundation to acquire a SQUID magnetometer to conduct different research projects in superlattices, multilayers, granular solids, metastable alloys, low dimensional quantum magnets, and other systems with low-dimensional magnetic and superconducting entities.

• On July 17, 2013, Mona Zaghloul from the University of Texas was offered $150,608 to explore the potentials of the internal thermal piezoresistive quality factor and displacement amplification effect in silicon resonant microstructures for realization of ultra-high sensitivity and low noise magnetometers.