Pham Van Thanh, Truong Thi Ngoc Lien, Luyen Van Nam

Main Article Content

Abstract

Unexpected metal pieces are significant problems for food and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Commonly, conventional coil metal detectors are used to detect these metal pieces. However, these detectors can only detect cm-size metal pieces, making it challenging to detect mm-size metal pieces. This work presents an advanced contactless small-magnetic-metal detector based on tunnel magnetoresistance sensors (TMR). To improve the system's sensitivity, the differential circuit combined with a simple AC-bias lock-in amplifier was designed to reduce the noise of TMR sensors. The sensitivity of this designed detection system is of 0.44 V/mm with a good linearity of R2=0.82674. The experimental results demonstrate that the fabricated prototype sensors can detect metal wires with a size of 100 μm in diameter and 1 mm in length. Due to a high sensitivity and a low-cost of fabrication, this system is promising to apply on the manufacturing lines for detecting unexpected tiny metal pieces. 

Keywords: Tunnel magnetoresistance sensor (TMR), differential circuit, lock-in amplifier, metal detector, magnetic sensor.

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