Current controlled switching of impedance in magnetic conductor with tilted anisotropy easy axis and its applications.

We present a concept and prototype of a memory element based on current driven magneto-impedance (MI) effect that stores the binary data (0, 1) as the orientation of the magnetization. The magnetization orientation in the surface layer with tilted anisotropy easy axis can be switched controllably between two stable states by applying current pulses of the appropriate sign, and can be detected by sensing the impedance. We demonstrated the functioning of a non-volatile magnetic memory with a read speed performance up to and above 2 GHz. A prototype of a memory element was realized on a short piece of amorphous microwire, as this material exhibits the highest MI effect, and the required anisotropy can be quite easily obtained. Nevertheless, this concept can be extended to other materials and geometries exhibiting MI effect and possessing a required magnetic anisotropy.

An embedded stress sensor for concrete SHM based on amorphous ferromagnetic microwires.

A new smart concrete aggregate design as a candidate for applications in structural health monitoring (SHM) of critical elements in civil infrastructure is proposed. The cement-based stress/strain sensor was developed by utilizing the stress/strain sensing properties of a magnetic microwire embedded in cement-based composite (MMCC). This is a contact-less type sensor that measures variations of magnetic properties resulting from stress variations. Sensors made of these materials can be designed to satisfy the specific demand for an economic way to monitor concrete infrastructure health. For this purpose, we embedded a thin magnetic microwire in the core of a cement-based cylinder, which was inserted into the concrete specimen under study as an extra aggregate. The experimental results show that the embedded MMCC sensor is capable of measuring internal compressive stress around the range of 1-30 MPa. Two stress sensing properties of the embedded sensor under uniaxial compression were studied: the peak amplitude and peak position of magnetic switching field. The sensitivity values for the amplitude and position within the measured range were 5 mV/MPa and 2.5 µs/MPa, respectively.