Sensors based on soft magnetic materials Panel discussion

The economic realities of productivity, quality and reliability for the industrial societies of the 21th century are placing major demands on existing manufacturing technologies. To meet both present and anticipated requirements, new and improved methods are needed. To be e!ective, the measurement, electronics and control components, and sub-systems, in particular sensors and sensor systems, have to be developed parallely as a part of computer-controlled manufacturing systems. Soft magnetic materials serve as a basic material for a wide scale of di!erent sensors. The aim of the present panel discussion was to give a survey of the latest technology and of the most important features of the sensors, which are based on soft magnetic materials, and to compare systematically their parameters. Magnetic sensors which are not based on soft magnetic materials (such as SQUIDs, NMR and semiconductor sensors) as well as reading heads were not covered by this panel The attention was concentrated mainly on device parameters and on applications, not on the theoretical background. P. Ripka gave the general introduction. He emphasized the keywords of the panel discussion: application, speci"cations and requirements. He had some general remarks: Sensors containing core, made of magnetic material seem to be always vectorial. It is possible to measure 1, 2, or even 3 components of the magnetic "eld using a single core. We are going to speak about sensors, which do measure "elds from DC; AC magnetic sensors