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Single-Side Fabrication of Multilevel 3-D Microstructures for Monolithic Dual Sensors.
- Source :
-
Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems . Jun2015, Vol. 24 Issue 3, p531-533. 3p. - Publication Year :
- 2015
-
Abstract
- Monolithic integration of micromechanical composite sensors needs to fabricate multiple levels of three-dimensional (3-D) microstructures to satisfy individual requirements from individual on-chip sensing elements. Meanwhile, volume fabrication of the composite sensors is needed in many applications that prefer single-sided process in low-cost non-silicon-on-insulator single wafer. A novel single-sided micromachining technique is herein proposed and developed to form such multilevel 3-D structures, where only integrated-circuit (IC) foundry available processes are used, i.e., neither double-sided process nor wafer-bonding is used. With the IC-foundry compatible micromachining process, a six-level 3-D microstructure has been successfully formed for tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS) sensors. Benefited from the single-side process and the namely pressure-sensor in accelerometer (PinG) dual-sensor architecture, the single-wafer-based dual-sensor features a tiny chip size of 1.25 mm $\times $ 1.25 mm $\times$ 0.45 mm. Supplied with 3.3 V, 0.1-mV/kPa sensitivity for the 500-kPa-ranged pressure sensor and 0.05-mV/g sensitivity for the 120-g-ranged accelerometer are measured. By freely suspending the pressure-sensor structure from the stress-free mass end, the influence of acceleration to the pressure sensor is well eliminated, which was the main problem of the previous PinG sensors. Besides the achieved high-performance TPMS dual sensor, the IC-foundry manufacturable technique for multilevel 3-D microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) structures can be widely used in various monolithic MEMS devices. [2015-0034] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 10577157
- Volume :
- 24
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 103129474
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1109/JMEMS.2015.2423296