Novel coupling concept for five-contact vertical hall devices

This paper reports on an improved coupling concept of CMOS-based five-contact (5C) vertical Hall sensors (VHS) for measuring in-plane magnetic field components. In contrast to existing sensor approaches using four 5C-VHS connected in parallel, only two 5C-VHS coupled in series are required. The coupling concept thus minimizes sensor footprint as well as power consumption. Furthermore, the 5C-VHS coupled in series exhibit a Hall sensitivity increased by 34 % and an inherent offset signal reduced by up to 80 % compared to individual 5C-VHS. The paper presents the novel coupling concept, finite element simulations describing the influence of the coupling scheme on the magnetic field sensitivity and experimental results comparing single 5C-VHS and arrangements of two and four coupled 5C-VHS.