Enhanced sensitivity with extended linearity in MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor

Rajavelu, M.; Sivakumar, D.; Rathnasami, Joseph Daniel; Sumangala, K.

doi:10.1049/mnl.2013.0496

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The piezoresistors dimensions and positions are already optimized for largest sensitivity (Kanda and Yasukawa, 1997;Joseph Daniel R et al, 2010). The piezoresistive gauges aligned on (111) direction were found to give better sensitivity (Rajavelu et al, 2013).…”

Section: Validation Of the Simulations Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…When large sensitivities are required, thinner diaphragms can be used but the tradeoff is the increasing nonlinearity. Perforated diaphragms have been proposed by previous works to solve this problem (Rajavelu et al, 2014;Rajavelu et al, 2013). By implementing perforations, while achieving a large sensitivity, it is possible to keep the diaphragm thickness and thus prevent nonlinearity problems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor with patterned thinning of diaphragm

Kordrostami

Hassanli

Akbarian

2020

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to find a new design that can increase the sensitivity of the sensor without sacrificing the linearity. A novel and very efficient method for increasing the sensitivity of MEMS pressure sensor has been proposed for the first time. Rather than perforation, we propose patterned thinning of the diaphragm so that specific regions on it are thinner. This method allows the diaphragm to deflect more in response with regard to the pressure. The best excavation depth has been calculated and a pressure sensor with an optimal pattern for thinned regions has been designed. Compared to the perforated diaphragm with the same pattern, larger output voltage is achieved for the proposed sensor. Unlike the perforations that have to be near the edges of the diaphragm, it is possible for the thin regions to be placed around the center of the diaphragm. This significantly increases the sensitivity of the sensor. In our designation, we have reached a 60 per cent thinning (of the diaphragm area) while perforations larger than 40 per cent degrade the operation of the sensor. The proposed method is applicable to other MEMS sensors and actuators and improves their ultimate performance. Design/methodology/approach Instead of perforating the diaphragm, we propose a patterned thinning scheme which improves the sensor performance. Findings By using thinned regions on the diaphragm rather than perforations, the sensitivity of the sensor was improved. The simulation results show that the proposed design provides larger membrane deflections and higher output voltages compared to the pressure sensors with a normal or perforated diaphragm. Originality/value The proposed MEMS piezoelectric pressure sensor for the first time takes advantage of thinned diaphragm with optimum pattern of thinned regions, larger outputs and larger sensitivity compared with the simple or perforated diaphragm pressure sensors.

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Section: Validation Of the Simulations Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor with patterned thinning of diaphragm

Kordrostami

Hassanli

Akbarian

2020

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“…With the development of advanced lithography and micromachining processes, the sizes of micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) resonators are constantly shrinking, expanding their applications in various fields such as RF filters, accelerometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors, and so on [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Micro-nano resonators have become an important direction for the development of next-generation sensors by virtue of their small size, low cost, and superior performance, which has stimulated the research interest of many research groups [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modal Coupling Effect in a Novel Nonlinear Micromechanical Resonator

Zhou

et al. 2020

Micromachines

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Capacitive micromechanical resonators share electrodes with the same bias voltage, resulting in the occurrence of electrostatic coupling between intrinsic modes. Unlike the traditional mechanical coupling, the electrostatic coupling is determined by the structural electric potential energy, and generally, it only occurs when the coupling modes operate in nonlinear regions. However, previous electrostatic coupling studies mainly focus on the stiffness softening region, with little attention on the opposite stiffness hardening condition. This paper presents a study on the electrostatic modal coupling effect in the stiffness hardening region. A novel capacitive micromechanical resonator with different modal nonlinearities is designed and fabricated. It is demonstrated that activating a cavity mode can shift the fundamental resonance of the manipulated mode by nearly 90 times its mechanical bandwidth. Moreover, the frequency shifting direction is found to be related to the manipulated mode’s nonlinearity, while the frequency hopscotch is determined by the cavity mode’s nonlinearity. The electrostatic coupling has been proven to be an efficient and tunable dynamical coupling with great potential for tuning the frequency in a wide range. The modal coupling theory displayed in this paper is suitable for most capacitive resonators and can be used to improve the resonator’s performance.

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“…In contrast, the wide-range pressure sensor has the diaphragm with a small aspect ratio and therefore high linearity but low sensitivity when measuring low pressure and easy to produce large measurement error [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. To overcome the problem, many design principles and considerations as well as optimization methods have been proposed recently [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ], yet a single-range piezoresistive pressure sensor basically has some inevitable shortcomings. For instance, Li et al [ 14 ] proposed a novel structural piezoresistive pressure sensor with four-beams-structured membrane which has achieved a high sensitivity of 25.48 mV/kPa and a low nonlinearity error of 0.75% at full scale (FS), but its pressure range is less than 5 kPa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Li et al [ 14 ] proposed a novel structural piezoresistive pressure sensor with four-beams-structured membrane which has achieved a high sensitivity of 25.48 mV/kPa and a low nonlinearity error of 0.75% at full scale (FS), but its pressure range is less than 5 kPa. Rajavelu et al [ 15 ] designed a highly sensitive pressure sensor with excellent linearity extended over 0–54 kPa by employing a 7 μm-thick diaphragm with double Wheatstone bridges, but the work is the only theoretical prediction. Lou et al [ 16 ] presented a nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS)-based piezoresistive pressure sensor by utilizing the SiNWs as the sensing elements, which has relatively high sensitivity of about 0.6% psi −1 , while Tian and co-workers [ 17 ] reported a graphene-based resistive pressure sensor with record-high sensitivity in a wide pressure range (0–100 kPa), but both have low linearity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design, Fabrication, and Implementation of an Array-Type MEMS Piezoresistive Intelligent Pressure Sensor System

Zhang

Chen

et al. 2018

Micromachines

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To meet the radiosonde requirement of high sensitivity and linearity, this study designs and implements a monolithically integrated array-type piezoresistive intelligent pressure sensor system which is made up of two groups of four pressure sensors with the pressure range of 0–50 kPa and 0–100 kPa respectively. First, theoretical models and ANSYS (version 14.5, Canonsburg, PA, USA) finite element method (FEM) are adopted to optimize the parameters of array sensor structure. Combing with FEM stress distribution results, the size and material characteristics of the array-type sensor are determined according to the analysis of the sensitivity and the ratio of signal to noise (SNR). Based on the optimized parameters, the manufacture and packaging of array-type sensor chips are then realized by using the standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) process. Furthermore, an intelligent acquisition and processing system for pressure and temperature signals is achieved. The S3C2440A microprocessor (Samsung, Seoul, Korea) is regarded as the core part which can be applied to collect and process data. In particular, digital signal storage, display and transmission are realized by the application of a graphical user interface (GUI) written in QT/E. Besides, for the sake of compensating the temperature drift and nonlinear error, the data fusion technique is proposed based on a wavelet neural network improved by genetic algorithm (GA-WNN) for average measuring signal. The GA-WNN model is implemented in hardware by using a S3C2440A microprocessor. Finally, the results of calibration and test experiments achieved with the temperature ranges from −20 to 20 °C show that: (1) the nonlinear error and the sensitivity of the array-type pressure sensor are 8330 × 10−4 and 0.052 mV/V/kPa in the range of 0–50 kPa, respectively; (2) the nonlinear error and the sensitivity are 8129 × 10−4 and 0.020 mV/V/kPa in the range of 50–100 kPa, respectively; (3) the overall error of the intelligent pressure sensor system is maintained at ±0.252% within the hybrid composite range (0–100 kPa). The involved results indicate that the developed array-type composite pressure sensor has good performance, which can provide a useful reference for the development of multi-range MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor.

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Enhanced sensitivity with extended linearity in MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor

Cited by 10 publications

References 11 publications

MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor with patterned thinning of diaphragm

MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensor with patterned thinning of diaphragm

Modal Coupling Effect in a Novel Nonlinear Micromechanical Resonator

Design, Fabrication, and Implementation of an Array-Type MEMS Piezoresistive Intelligent Pressure Sensor System

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