Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in magnetic multilayers (plasma processes): An overview and their future applications

Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) technology is a rapidly emerging field in science and technology due to its potential applications as position sensors in automotive electronics, eddy current sensors for non destructive testing, magnetic read heads and magnetic random access memory. This technology has already established a potential market for magnetic read heads. However, lot of interests has been generated in the scientific community to replace the Hall or anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) elements by GMR materials due its higher sensitivity. This review article presents an overview of different structure of magnetic multilayers deposited by plasma processes to observe the GMR effect. Magnetic multilayers with different compositions and deposition parameters are discussed in detail and their magnetic and magnetotransport properties are presented. A brief discussion on application of these materials as an eddy current sensor and position sensors is given