A methanol microsensor integrated with a micro heater manufactured using the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technique was presented. The sensor has a capability of detecting low concentration methanol gas. Structure of the sensor is composed of interdigitated electrodes, a sensitive film and a heater. The heater located under the interdigitated electrodes is utilized to provide a working temperature to the sensitive film. The sensitive film prepared by the sol-gel method is tin dioxide doped cadmium sulfide, which is deposited on the interdigitated electrodes. To obtain the suspended structure and deposit the sensitive film, the sensor needs a post-CMOS process to etch the sacrificial silicon dioxide layer and silicon substrate. The methanol senor is a resistive type. A readout circuit converts the resistance variation of the sensor into the output voltage. The experimental results show that the methanol sensor has a sensitivity of 0.18 V/ppm.

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This study discusses sacrificial bridges that are used to release MEMS devices. Before being released, sacrificial bridges connect all the component structures into an integral structure. Solder bump bonding is used to mount the MEMS chip on another chip or a printed circuit board (PCB) and to maintain the alignment among all component structures after removal of the sacrificial bridges. Two types of sacrificial bridges were designed, analyzed and fabricated. The fabrication process—which used low resistivity single crystal silicon (SCS) wafers as the device material—was developed to implement the sacrificial bridges. Novel SCS through silicon vias (TSVs), which interconnect stacked chips, was made using the same process. An electrostatic comb drive actuator was fabricated and mounted onto a PCB. The fabricated actuator was tested to demonstrate the feasibility of the fabrication process, sacrificial bridges and SCS TSVs. The results show that the actuator worked well. Its maximum displacement and resonant frequency were 69.9 µm and 406 Hz, respectively. This method is promising for the delivery of a novel 3D system in package for MEMS devices.