Bulk metallic glass for low noise fluxgate

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.