Design of piezoresistive pressure sensor for enhancing stress of MEMS cantilever

Abstract

In the automotive, aerospace, biomedical, and home appliance industries, piezoresistive pressure sensors were among the earliest MEMS products created. Piezoresistive microcantilever sensor is one of the promising mechanical microsensors that have been around for many years. Microcantilevers are mechanical stress sensors that are being developed as physical chemical, and biological sensors. The piezoresistive transduction mechanism is a common transduction process for pressure sensors. This piezoresistive pressure sensor design has improved tremendously over the last decade, beginning with the development of piezoresistance in silicon and continuing with the most recent piezoresistive pressure sensor materials. This paper provides cantilever designs with rectangle, T-shape, E shape, and U shape stress concentration areas to increase the surface-stress sensitivity of piezoresistive micro cantilevers. Differential stress at the surface to the beam of the cantilever causes the bending of cantilever. Silicon dioxide material are used for the cantilever substrates, while p-doped silicon is used for the piezoresistor. COMSOL software is used to get the sensor design and analysis parameters such as stress, deflection, and sensitivity.