Magnetoresistance effects are becoming one of the most important magnetic sensor technologies for a wide variety of applications, e.g. the automotive industry and biomedical applications. Within this master thesis simulation results for magnetoresistance sensors utilizing perpendicular anisotropy with an emphasis on angle-sensing are presented. Basically all magnetoresisitve sensors currently on the market are sensitive to magnetic fields in plane of the magnetic material, therefore the basic

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... ea in this work is to compensate the shape anisotropy, which is caused by the elongated form of the sensor, with a perpendicular anisotropy in order to obtain a smooth hysteresis curve for a field applied along the perpendicular axis. The tool with which this is analyzed is micromagnetics. Micromagnetics has been applied to applications such as magnetic storage, magnetic sensors and more with great success. Hence embedding micromagnetism into a finite difference code is an eligible method to model this concept. The first part is focused on the physics behind these sensing devices and how such materials are simulated using state of the art finite difference micromagnetic code, whereas the second part presents the simulation results. We find that a sensor as described above, can yield linear transfer curves, making it an attractive option for linear field sensors. Additionally if this sensor concept is implemented as an angle sensor its performance is comparable to state-of-the-art Hall angle sensing devices. However the performance is highly dependent on the position of the sensor. Since the field of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in sensors is still emerging new concepts provide challenges as well as opportunities, therefore the aim of this work is to present promising new sensor designs that provide an attractive alternative to current concepts.