Broadband and high-sensitivity permeability measurements on a single magnetic particle by transformer coupled permeameter

We have developed a system to measure permeability over a wide frequency range with high sensitivity, which we call the transformer coupled permeameter. In this system, the magnetic sample is sandwiched by two short-terminated coplanar waveguides that form a loosely coupled transformer. In this way, the stimulus signal acting as a background becomes smaller as the frequency decreases, thus significantly suppressing the deterioration of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at low frequencies that most conventional permeameters suffer from. It has been demonstrated that this system can provide a sensitivity high enough to measure the permeability of a single ferromagnetic flake particle comprising a noise suppression sheet over 10 MHz–20 GHz with a high SNR.