OBTAINING HYSTERESIS LOOPS AT LOW FREQUENCY FOR CHARACTERIZATION OF MATERIALS TO BE USED IN BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

Abstract

The promising development of magnetic sensors in biomedical field demands an appropriate level of understanding of the magnetic properties of the materials used in their fabrication. To date only few of the types of magnetic materials are encountered where their magnetic properties, characterization techniques and magnetization behavior are yet to be explored more suitably in the light of their applications. This research work studies the characterization of materials by using a cost effective and simple circuit consisting of inductive transducer and an OP-AMP as a voltage integrator. In this approach the circuit was simulated using PSPICE and experiments have been conducted to achieve the desired results. The simulation and experimental results are obtained for three test materials namely iron, steel and plastic. The novelty lies in applying the simple circuit for material testing and characterization via obtaining simulation results and validating these results through experiment. The magnetic properties in low external magnetic field are studied with materials under test. The magnetization effect of a magneto-inductive sensor is detected in low frequency range for different magnetic core materials. The results have shown magnetization behaviour of magnetic materials due to the variation of permeability and magnetism. The resulted hysteresis loops appeared to have different shapes for different materials. The magnetic hysteresis loop found for iron core demonstrated a bigger coercive force and larger reversals of magnetism than these of steel core, thus obtaining its magnetic saturation at a larger magnetic field strength. The shape of the hysteresis loop itself is found to be varying upon the nature of the material in use. The resulted magnetization behaviors of the materials proved their possible applicability for use in sensing devices. The key concern of this work is found upon selecting the appropriate magnetic materials at the desired frequency of operation for magneto resistive applications, magneto-resistive sensors and for an extensive range of biomedical sensor application.