Recently, Professor Huang Huolin's team from the School of Optoelectronic Engineering and Instrument Science has made significant progress in the field of third-generation semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) magnetic sensors. They have taken the lead in developing a three-dimensional magnetic sensor chip that can operate stably in a wide temperature range of 1.9 K~673K internationally, and further developed high-precision domestic magnetic detection instruments and a series of downstream products. This technology breaks through industry bottlenecks such as high temperature failure, large linearity error, and small working bandwidth of traditional magnetic sensors, providing breakthrough solutions for high-precision magnetic field detection, target tracking, velocity/displacement sensing, and current detection in aerospace, deep-sea exploration, smart healthcare, intelligent manufacturing, robotics, and other fields.
Magnetic sensors, as core components in industrial control, automotive electronics, Haitian surveying, aerospace, and power system fields, have long faced two major challenges: narrow temperature operating range and limited spatial perception. Traditional Si, InSb, and GaAs magnetic sensors generally operate at temperatures below 150 ℃, and cannot work in high-temperature environments or have high temperature drift, resulting in low detection accuracy and inability to meet the requirements of extreme environmental applications; Existing technologies are mostly limited to single axis magnetic field detection and have large probe volumes, making it difficult to achieve precise detection of three-dimensional magnetic field vectors in narrow spaces.
GaN has inherent material advantages such as high temperature resistance, high pressure resistance, and radiation resistance. After more than ten years of research and development, the team at Dalian University of Technology has innovatively proposed a GaN quantum well structure based on the theory of electronic high confinement, using a collaborative innovation route of structural design, preparation process, and circuit algorithm. They have further broken through the atomic level surface/interface precision construction key process and successfully developed a three-dimensional magnetic sensor chip technology with a working temperature range (1.9 K~673K) and magnetic field detection range (better than 6 orders of magnitude), "double width", high linearity (
The team has conducted a series of research on next-generation wide bandgap semiconductor power electronics, intelligent sensing, memory storage, and instrument manufacturing in response to the major strategic needs of domestic chip production. They have achieved a series of original scientific research results and promoted their application in multiple leading enterprises, providing key technical support for fields such as new energy vehicles, smart healthcare, and power system safety monitoring. The team has undertaken more than 30 scientific research projects from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation, and other levels, won 3 provincial and municipal level scientific and technological awards, published over 120 high-level academic papers, and holds more than 70 US/domestic invention patents. With support from various levels of projects, the team focuses on key technologies for high reliability enhanced gallium nitride power switch devices and high-end sensor chip and instrument manufacturing technology, continuing to contribute to the domestic substitution of high-end chips and instruments with independent intellectual property rights.
Source: Sensor Expert Network