Elimination of hysteresis effect in superparamagnetic nanoparticle detection by GMR sensors for biosensing

The biosensing methods utilizing superparamagnetic nanoparticles as bio-tags and giant magneto-resistive (GMR) or tunneling magnetoresistive (TMR) sensors as signal detectors have attracted increasing interests in early disease diagnosis as well as in molecular biology research area. [1] To achieve the signal of targets, one commonly used method is to compare the sensor hysteresis loops before and after the introducing of superparamagnetic nanoparticles onto sensor surface, and the sensor response variation has been regarded as an indicator of target analyte's amount. [2, 3] However, the hysteresis effect existing in ferromagnetic material may bring an error in the sensor output reading, which can be problematic in the superparamagnetic nanoparticle signal detection. Since the hysteresis behavior exists in all magnetoresistive sensors made of ferromagnetic material, it is necessary to investigate its effect on superparamagnetic nanoparticle detection and eliminate its negative influences.