Gate-tunable graphene-based Hall sensors on flexible substrates with increased sensitivity.

We demonstrate a novel concept for operating graphene-based Hall sensors using an alternating current (AC) modulated gate voltage, which provides three important advantages compared to Hall sensors under static operation: (1) The sensor sensitivity can be doubled by utilizing both n- and p-type conductance. (2) A static magnetic field can be read out at frequencies in the kHz range, where the 1/f noise is lower compared to the static case. (3) The off-set voltage in the Hall signal can be reduced. This significantly increases the signal-to-noise ratio compared to Hall sensors without a gate electrode. A minimal detectable magnetic field B_min down to 290 nT / √ Hz and sensitivity up to 0.55 V/VT was found for Hall sensors working on flexible polyimide (PI) substrates. This clearly outperforms state-of-the-art flexible Hall sensors and is comparable to the values obtained by the best rigid III/V semiconductor Hall sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]