A New Design of a CMOS Vertical Hall Sensor with a Low Offset

Vertical Hall sensors (VHSs), compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, are used to detect magnetic fields in the plane of the sensor. In previous studies, their performance was limited by a large offset. This paper reports on a novel CMOS seven-contact VHS (7CVHS), which is formed by adding two additional contacts to a traditional five-contact VHS (5CVHS) to alleviate the offset. The offset voltage and offset magnetic field of the 7CVHS are reduced by 90.20% and 88.31% of those of the 5CVHS, respectively, with a 16.16% current-related sensitivity loss. Moreover, the size and positions of the contacts are optimized in standard GLOBALFOUNDRIES 0.18 mu m BCDlite (TM) technology by scanning parameters using FEM simulations. The simulation data are analyzed in groups to study the influence of the size and contact positions on the current-related sensitivity, offset voltage, and offset magnetic field.