Amorphous ferromagnetic materials in the form of microwires are of interest for the development of various sensors. This paper analyzes and argues for the use of microwires of two basic compositions of Co₇₁Fe₅B₁₁Si₁₀Cr₃ and Fe_3.9(4.9)Co_64.82B_10.2Si₁₂Cr₉₍₈₎Mo_0.08 as stress/strain and temperature sensors, respectively. The following properties make them suitable for innovative applications: miniature dimensions, small coercivity, low anisotropy and magnetostriction, tunable magnetic structure, magnetic anisotropy, and Curie temperature by annealing. For example, these sensors can be used for testing the internal stress/strain condition of polymer composite materials and controlling the temperature of hypothermia treatments. The sensing operation is based on the two fundamental effects: the generation of higher frequency harmonics of the voltage pulse induced during remagnetization in wires demonstrating magnetic bistability, and magnetoimpedance.

Various thermal treatments have long been known to be effective in tailoring structural and magnetic properties of amorphous ferromagnetic wires, consequently, a desired magnetic anisotropy can be controlled for specific sensing applications. This paper deals with the effects of annealing and applied stresses on the magnetization processes and magnetoimpedance (MI) in Co₇₁Fe₅B₁₁Si₁₀Cr₃ glass-coated microwires having amorphous or partially crystalline structure. The alloy under study has a small positive magnetostriction (approximately 10^-8) in its amorphous unstressed state. By applying a tensile stress to amorphous microwires, an abrupt transformation of the hysteresis loop is observed owing to the anisotropy type change due to stress-dependent magnetostriction which changes sign. The modification in the anisotropy type greatly enhances the stress sensitivity of higher frequency harmonics induced during re-magnetization and MI. The wires with a partially crystalline structure did not exhibit a noticeable stress dependence of magnetic properties, but after annealing a significant increase in coercivity was observed after applying a tensile stress. The obtained results were investigated in terms of a magnetostrictive model of magnetic anisotropy offering a reasonable explanation.

Magnetoimpedance (MI) in Co-based microwires with an amorphous and partially crystalline state was investigated at elevated frequencies (up to several GHz), with particular attention paid to the influence of tensile stress on the MI behavior, which is called stress-MI. Two mechanisms of MI sensitivity related to the DC magnetization re-orientation and AC permeability dispersion were discussed. Remarkable sensitivity of impedance changes with respect to applied tensile stress at GHz frequencies was obtained in partially crystalline wires subjected to current annealing. Increasing the annealing current enhanced the axial easy anisotropy of a magnetoelastic origin, which made it possible to increase the frequency of large stress-MI: for 90mA-annealed wire, the impedance at 2 GHz increased by about 300% when a stress of 450 MPa was applied. Potential applications included sensing elements in stretchable substrates for flexible electronics, wireless sensors, and tunable smart materials. For reliable microwave measurements, an improved SOLT (short-open-load-thru) calibration technique was developed that required specially designed strip cells as wire holders. The method made it possible to precisely measure the impedance characteristics of individual wires, which can be further employed to characterize the microwave scattering at wire inclusions used as composites fillers.