Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 249 (2002) 264–268

Parallel permeability of ferromagnetic wires

up to GHz frequencies
O. Acher*, A.-L. Adenot, S. Deprot
CEA Le Ripault, BP 16, F-37260 Monts, France

Abstract

The parallel permeability of ferromagnetic wires can be investigated through a variety of measurement set-ups, up to
frequencies of 10 GHz or more. Negative magnetostriction wires exhibit significant permeability levels, that can be
tailored through the ferromagnetic composition and geometrical characteristics. This makes microwires attractive for a
variety of applications.
r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PACS: 41.20.Jb; 75.50.Kj; 76.20.+q; 76.50.+g

Keywords: Microwave permeability; Permeameter; Amorphous wires

1. Introduction and large permeability levels can be observed up to

Thin ferromagnetic wires are attractive for a
variety of applications as inductive materials over
a very wide frequency range. The response of
magnetic wires to a large variety of types and
orientations of excitations has been reported [1–4].
This presentation focuses on the response of
magnetic wires to high-frequency magnetic fields
parallel to the wire.
It has been established that for a large class of
amorphous wires, at least a significant portion
of the magnetization is circumferential. This is
essentially the case for negative magnetostriction
materials. The permeability response of such wires
to a magnetic field parallel to the wire is rotational,
*Corresponding author.
E-mail address: acher@ripault.cea.fr (O. Acher).
0304-8853/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 4 - 8 8 5 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 5 4 1 - 3
GHz frequencies.
2. Measurement techniques
Several techniques allow the determination of
the parallel permeability of thin wires at high
frequencies. Different types of permeameters have
been developed for thin film permeability measure-
ments. Some are based on a two-coil set-up,
including an exciting coil and a pickup coil [5].
Other permeameters are based on single coil
measurement, that can also be viewed as a shorted
microstrip line [6]. The two-coil setups are
generally more precise in the lower frequency
range, whereas the single-coil devices are more
suitable for the high-frequency range, and have
been demonstrated up to 6 GHz [7]. All these
devices require thin square samples with typical
 O. Acher et al. / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 249 (2002) 264–268 265

dimension between 5 and 10 mm, and ferromag-

netic volume in the 10!6–10!3 mm3 range. Samples
made of parallel wires placed parallel on a non-
conductive square substrate can be investigated
using these devices. However, one should keep in
mind that the finite length of the wires may affect
their domain structure, and also lead to significant
demagnetizing effects that impact the microwave
permeability.
The flexibility of the wires also offers attractive
opportunities for high-frequency wide band char-
acterization [8,9]. Samples suitable for coaxial
measurements can be manufactured by winding
microwires into torus with 7 mm outer diameter
and 3 mm inner diameter. Such samples can be
easily manufactured from continuous wire coils,
using a conventional winding machine, and Fig. 1. Measurement setups for GHz range permeability
providing glue during the torus manufacturing. measurement on thin magnetic wires; (a) conventional single
coil permeameter; (b) wound torus technique in coaxial line
The torus are measured using a conventional (reflection-transmission mode); (c) coaxial perturbation techni-
coaxial measurement technique, that yield perme- que in reflection mode.
ability up to 18 GHz, with a good precision from
frequencies as low as 100 MHz. A simple homo-
genization law then allows the determination of Comparison between the different techniques
the permeability of the wire from the permeability suggests that basically all three techniques are
of the composite and the ferromagnetic volume suitable, that the stress due to the bending has no
fraction in the sample. The fundamental mode significant influence on the permeability, but the
propagating in the coaxial line can be described demagnetizing effects associated with conventional
analytically, even in the composite material as it permeameters may slightly affect the measure-
has a cylindrical symmetry. As a consequence, the ments. The precision is definitely better with the
determination of the permeability requires neither coaxial techniques, and they do not require a
extensive calculation, nor any calibration proce- calibration step requiring a sample with known
dure with a reference sample, in contrast with permeability [10] (Fig. 1).
conventional permeameters. This is very valuable,
as it is not so easy to have a reference sample with
precisely known permeability. Other advantages
are related to the very large length of the wire 3. Experimental results
along the circumferential direction, including the
absence of end defects and demagnetizing effects. The parallel permeability of different types of
On the other hand, some stress may be generated wires up to GHz frequencies or more has been
in the wires due to the bending, and a rather large reported, including positive and negative magne-
amount of wire is needed (several hundred meters). tostriction cold-drawn amorphous wires [11], non-
Recently, this technique has been improved to magnetic metallic wires and nickel wires [8],
allow the characterization of wound wire samples amorphous glass-covered microwires [12–14].
consisting of a limited number of turns [10], which Glass-covered microwires obtained from the
makes it less material-consuming. In addition, the Taylor technique are especially attractive for
radius of the torus has been increased up to microwave use. It is possible to control the metallic
40 mm, which decreases the stress due to bending. core diameter over a range that is relevant
This technique can be operated in reflection mode. compared to the skin depth, and to tune the
266 O. Acher et al. / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 249 (2002) 264–268

500 500
µ"
(a) (a)
µ"
(b) (b)
300 300
Permeability

Permeability
(c) (c)

100 100
µ' µ'

0.1 1 10 0.1 1 10
-100 -100 Frequency (GHz)
Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 2. Real and imaginary permeability measured by the Fig. 3. Real and imaginary permeability measured by the
wound torus method for Co70Fe4Ni1.5Mo1.5Si11B12 wires of wound torus method for 7 mm metallic core diameter and
17.5 mm total diameter and different core diameters: (a) 5 mm; 14 mm total diameter wires of (a) CoMnSiB; (b) Co71.8Fe2Ni1.5-
(b) 7.5 mm; (c) 10.5 mm. Mo1.5Si11.2B12; (c) Co67.2Fe4.1Ni1.4Mo1.7Si14.1B11.5.

gyromagnetic resonance frequency trough the com- 150

position and the thickness of the glass coating [14].
µ'
Typical permeability spectra are presented in 100
Figs. 2–4. They are obtained using the coaxial µ"
Permeability

measurement technique. They can be viewed as 50

frequency-resolved ferromagnetic resonance spec-
tra under zero external field. Fig. 2 illustrates the
effect of the amorphous ferromagnetic diameter
for a constant glass plus ferromagnetic diameter
for a slightly negative magnetostrictive ferromag-
netic material. For thinner cores, the loss peak is
more pronounced, as further illustrated in Fig. 4.
As the core diameter increases, the skin effect leads
to additional losses below the gyromagnetic
resonance frequency, and the loss peak broadens.
In addition, the gyromagnetic resonance frequency
decreases as a function of the glass shell thickness.
This is consistent with a significant contribution of
the magnetostrictive effect to the anisotropy of the
wires. This effect is further illustrated in Fig. 3.
Curve (c) corresponds to a material with vanishing
negative magnetostriction, and has a smaller
resonance frequency than the material on curve
(b) that has a smaller Fe content and therefore a
larger negative magnetostriction value. The gyro-
magnetic resonance frequency can be tuned in the
600 MHz to 2 GHz range by a proper control of
the magnetostriction coefficient of the amorphous
alloy and of the glass shell thickness.
The high-frequency parallel permeability of
some positive magnetostriction wires has also been
0
0.1 1 10 100
-50
-100 Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 4. Measured permeability of a 14 mm total diameter and
4 mm metallic core diameter wire of Co69Fe1Nb10B20.
investigated. The Fe-based UNITIKA wires ex-
hibit significant high-frequency permeability levels
[11], indicating that part of the magnetization does
not lie along the wire axis. In contrast, most
positive magnetostriction amorphous glass-cov-
ered microwires exhibit a permeability close to
unity, in agreement with the assumption that the
magnetization lies along the wire axis.
4. Theoretical approach
A fruitful approach to account for the micro-
wave permeability of negative magnetostriction
wires is to use the conventional gyromagnetic
 O. Acher et al. / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 249 (2002) 264–268
equations to compute a so-called ‘‘intrinsic’’
permeability mi ; and then to derive the apparent
permeability ma that can be accessed through
measurement by taking into account the skin
effect [8]. The proper definition of the permeability
of inclusions that are small compared to the free
space wavelength, but that are not necessarily
small compared to the wavelength in the material,
has been derived in Ref. [15]. It writes
ma ¼ /BS=H0 ;
where /BS is the average of the induction over the
ferromagnetic material for an externally applied
microwave field H0 :
If one assumes that the ferromagnetic core is
circumferentially magnetized, the intrinsic perme-
ability mi can be computed from either Bloch–
Bloembergen or Landau–Lifchitz model. The
expression for permeability is the same as for an
infinite thin film. It can be easily evaluated from
the anisotropy field and saturation magnetization
that can be accessed through quasi-static measure-
ments. Then the skin effect has to be taken into
account. For metallic inclusions such as spheres
[16], wires [8] and thin films [15], the relation
between the apparent permeability and intrinsic
permeability takes the form
ma ¼ Aðki aÞmi ;
where ki is the wavevector in the ferromagnetic
material and a is the radius (or half thickness) of
the ferromagnetic element. In the case of wires
parallel to the excitation,
2 J1 ðki aÞ
Aðki aÞ ¼ : ð3Þ
ki a J0 ðki aÞ
A good agreement between this theoretical ap-
proach and experimental measurements is gener-
ally observed [7,11]. However, it has been shown
that for wires with low anisotropy, the resonance
frequency is somewhat higher than predicted from
this model [14]. This may not only be attributed to
spatial inhomogeneities of the anisotropy field, but
also to exchange effects that are not taken into
account in this model. In that case, a more
adequate approach should be inspired by Ref.
[4]. The emergence of efficient numerical methods
to compute the broad band high-frequency perme-
267
ability response of magnetic structures [17] is also
expected to be a fruitful approach for the future.
The bound of allowed values for microwave
permeability have been derived in a rather general
case, for magnetic inclusions and composites of
any shape [18]. It writes
; ð4Þ
ð1Þ where is the gyromagnetic ratio over 2p; and
4pMs is the saturation magnetization. This bound
applies only to materials with no skin effect. In the
case of the material on Fig. 4, it is checked that the
integral of the imaginary permeability weighed by
the frequency reaches 87% of the bound. This is a
useful indication that nearly all the magnetic
volume indeed takes part in the gyromagnetic
process.
5. Applications
There is a large variety of applications for these
high-frequency high-permeability wires. Putting
aside the giant magneto impedance effects that
are not considered here, there are basically two
families of applications for these wires. The low-
ð2Þ
loss applications include wound cores for induc-
tors and chokes [19]. The high-permeability levels
up to 10 MHz allow the manufacturing of in-
ductive components and, provided the wires are
sufficiently thin, the losses due to skin effect can be
pushed to higher frequencies than for conventional
amorphous ribbons. The properties of these cores
under high magnetic excitation has been proved to
be better than that made of conventional ferrites
[20], which makes them attractive for radio
applications.
Another class of application is related to the
high-loss properties of the microwires around the
gyromagnetic resonance and in the frequency
range where strong skin effect is present. The
microwires are extremely attractive for coaxial
cable shielding [21,22]. They are wound around the
inner conductor envelope and interact with the H
field created with the AC current flowing through
the cable. They allow the suppression of the
268 O. Acher et al. / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 249 (2002) 264–268
parasitic signals over the frequency range where
the wires exhibit high losses. This frequency range
can be tuned by adjusting properly the composi-
tion, the diameter of the ferromagnetic core
and the thickness of the glass shell. Eq. (2) shows
that the expected figure of merit for such applica-
tion varies as the square of the saturation
magnetization.
Many other microwave applications in which
ferromagnetic thin films are used can also be
treated using ferromagnetic wires, such as tuneable
filters in microstrip lines [23].
6. Conclusion
Negative magnetostriction microwires exhibit
significant permeability levels at high frequencies.
Several measurement techniques are available
to measure the permeability in the GHz range.
The techniques developed for thin film measure-
ments on conventional rigid substrates apply,
but the flexibility of the wires allows the use of
coaxial setups, that yield better precision. The
frequency response of the wires can be tailored
through their magnetostriction coefficient and
their geometrical characteristics, which makes
them attractive for a variety of microwave
applications.
Acknowledgements
We thank P.M. Jacquart, M.J. Malliavin,
D. Pain, M. Ledieu and F. Bertin for their
contribution to the investigation of the high
frequency aspects in magnetic wires presented
here.
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