Magnetoelectric sensors provide the ability to measure magnetic fields down to the pico tesla range and are currently the subject of intense research. Such sensors usually combine a piezoelectric and a magnetostrictive material, so that magnetically induced stresses can be measured electrically. Scandium aluminium nitride gained a lot of attraction in the last few years due to its enhanced piezoelectric properties. Its usage as resonantly driven microelectromechanical system (MEMS) in such sensors is accompanied by a manifold of influences from crystal growth leading to impacts on the electrical and mechanical parameters. Usual investigations via nanoindentation allow a fast determination of mechanical properties with the disadvantage of lacking the access to the anisotropy of specific properties. Such anisotropy effects are investigated in this work in terms of the Young’s modulus and the strain on basis of a MEMS structures through a newly developed fully automated procedure of eigenfrequency fitting based on a new non-Lorentzian fit function and subsequent analysis using an extended Euler–Bernoulli theory. The introduced procedure is able to increase the resolution of the derived parameters compared to the common nanoindentation technique and hence allows detailed investigations of the behavior of magnetoelectric sensors, especially of the magnetic field dependent Young‘s modulus of the magnetostrictive layer.

The proposed study demonstrates a single-step CVD method for synthesizing three-dimensional vertical MoS₂ nanosheets. The postulated synthesizing approach employs a temperature ramp with a continuous N₂ gas flow during the deposition process. The distinctive signals of MoS₂ were revealed via Raman spectroscopy study, and the substantial frequency difference in the characteristic signals supported the bulk nature of the synthesized material. Additionally, XRD measurements sustained the material’s crystallinity and its 2H-MoS₂ nature. The FIB cross-sectional analysis provided information on the origin and evolution of the vertical MoS₂ structures and their growth mechanisms. The strain energy produced by the compression between MoS₂ islands is assumed to primarily drive the formation of vertical MoS₂ nanosheets. In addition, vertical MoS₂ structures that emerge from micro fissures (cracks) on individual MoS₂ islands were observed and examined. For the evaluation of electrical properties, field-effect transistor structures were fabricated on the synthesized material employing standard semiconductor technology. The lateral back-gated field-effect transistors fabricated on the synthesized material showed an n-type behavior with field-effect mobility of 1.46 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ and an estimated carrier concentration of 4.5 × 10¹² cm⁻². Furthermore, the effects of a back-gate voltage bias and channel dimensions on the hysteresis effect of FET devices were investigated and quantified.

This study investigates the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) on SiO₂, examining the formation of various grains and grain boundaries (GBs) in single- to few-layer MoS₂. The material, optical, and electronic properties of the resulting MoS₂ were evaluated through Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Notably, both Raman and photoluminescence intensities were quenched at the GBs. Moreover, a consistent redshift in the photoluminescence peak positions at the grain boundaries indicating local strain or defect-induced modifications. Electrical characterization of lateral 2-terminal backgated devices on individual grains exhibited lower carrier mobility than those fabricated on continuous few-layers MoS₂, with the highest measured mobility reaching 18.6 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹. Additionally, the back-gated field effect transistors (FET) on individual grains and continuous fewlayered showed pronounced clockwise hysteresis in their transfer characteristics, revealing the distinctive contribution of MoS₂ surface and MoS₂/SiO₂ interface defects and their associated traps-as primary sources of hysteresis.

In recent investigations of magnetoelectric sensors based on microelectromechanical cantilevers made of TiN/AlN/Ni, a complex eigenfrequency behavior arising from the anisotropic ΔE effect was demonstrated. Within this work, a FEM simulation model based on this material system is presented to allow an investigation of the vibrational properties of cantilever-based sensors derived from magnetocrystalline anisotropy while avoiding other anisotropic contributions. Using the magnetocrystalline ΔE effect, a magnetic hardening of Nickel is demonstrated for the (110) as well as the (111) orientation. The sensitivity is extracted from the field-dependent eigenfrequency curves. It is found, that the transitions of the individual magnetic domain states in the magnetization process are the dominant influencing factor on the sensitivity for all crystal orientations. It is shown, that Nickel layers in the sensor aligned along the medium or hard axis yield a higher sensitivity than layers along the easy axis. The peak sensitivity was determined to 41.3 T⁻¹ for (110) in-plane-oriented Nickel at a magnetic bias flux of 1.78 mT. The results achieved by FEM simulations are compared to the results calculated by the Euler–Bernoulli theory.