Hall effect spintronics for gas detection

We present the concept of magnetic gas detection by the extraordinary Hall effect. The technique is compatible with the existing conductometric gas detection technologies and allows the simultaneous measurement of two independent parameters: resistivity and magnetization affected by the target gas. Feasibility of the approach is demonstrated by detecting low concentration hydrogen using thin CoPd films as the sensor material. The Hall effect sensitivity of the optimized samples exceeds 240% per 10⁴ ppm at hydrogen concentrations below 0.5% in the hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere, which is more than two orders of magnitude higher than the sensitivity of the conductance detection.