A novel method of temperature compensation for piezoresistive microcantilever-based sensors

Abstract

Microcantilever with integrated piezoresistor has been applied to in situ surface stress measurement in the field of biochemical sensors. It is well known that piezoresistive cantilever-based sensors are sensitive to ambient temperature changing due to highly temperature-dependent piezoresistive effect and mismatch in thermal expansion of composite materials. This paper proposes a novel method of temperature drift compensation for microcantilever-based sensors with a piezoresistive full Wheatstone bridge integrated at the clamped ends by subtracting the amplified output voltage of the reference cantilever from the output voltage of the sensing cantilever through a simple temperature compensating circuit. Experiments show that the temperature drift of microcantilever sensors can be significantly reduced by the method.

Thermal-Performance Instability in Piezoresistive Sensors: Inducement and Improvement

“…The piezoresistors on each cantilever can form a Wheatstone bridge to reduce the temperature sensitivity [105]. Moreover, the sensor sensitivity can be further improved if a full Wheatstone bridge is integrated in each cantilever [106]. However, there are still some problems in the compensation by two co-fabrication cantilevers.…”

Cantilevers for biological monitoring: opportunities for classical and quantum physics

“…Piezoresistive read-out: Piezoresistive materials change their resistivity when they are mechanically strained. For many years, various groups have embedded such materials into cantilevers in order to detect the deflection by electrical property changes [37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

A Real-Time Thermal Self-Elimination Method for Static Mode Operated Freestanding Piezoresistive Microcantilever-Based Biosensors

“…Although several groups proposed different methods [ 3 , 9 , 10 , 11 ] to reduce thermal effects on piezoresistive MCL sensors, most of them are based on double beam configurations and not applicable for bio/chemical detections. Thaysen used similar materials to make the thermal expansion coefficient of the two MCLs the same [ 12 ], but this method required an additional fabrication process, resulting in higher cost and lower yields.…”