Abstract
This paper presents the experimental evaluation of a new piezoresistive MEMS strain sensor. Geometric characteristics of the sensor silicon carrier have been employed to improve the sensor sensitivity. Surface features or trenches have been introduced in the vicinity of the sensing elements. These features create stress concentration regions (SCRs) and as a result, the strain/stress field was altered. The improved sensing sensitivity compensated for the signal loss. The feasibility of this methodology was proved in a previous work using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). This paper provides the experimental part of the previous study. The experiments covered a temperature range from −50 °C to +50 °C. The MEMS sensors are fabricated using five different doping concentrations. FEA is also utilized to investigate the effect of material properties and layer thickness of the bonding adhesive on the sensor response. The experimental findings are compared to the simulation results to guide selection of bonding adhesive and installation procedure. Finally, FEA was used to analyze the effect of rotational/alignment errors.
Highlights
New advances in the field of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have broadened considerably the applications of these devices [1,2,3]
MEMS technology has enabled the miniaturization of the devices, and a typical MEMS sensor is at least one order of magnitude smaller compared to a conventional sensor that is used to measure the same quantity
Near-field and far-field strain concepts were discussed to account for signal loss
Summary
New advances in the field of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have broadened considerably the applications of these devices [1,2,3]. Different sensing phenomena have been explored to develop MEMS sensors. These phenomena include modulation of optical [4,5,6], capacitive [7,8], piezoelectric [9], frequency shift [10] and piezoresistive properties [11,12,13,14,15]. Piezoresistive transduction has proved to have better performance compared to other sensing physics [16,17,18]. During the design and implementation of MEMS piezoresistive sensors, these shortcomings have to be considered
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