PIEZOELECTRICALLY DRIVEN MICROTRANSDUCER MASS SENSORS

Abstract

ABSTRACT Various types of piezoelectrically driven microtransducers which have a similar physical dimension, i.e., microcantilever, microdiaphragm and microbridge, were fabricated by micro electromechanical system (MEMS) technique and are compared on the mass sensing behavior. The diol based sol-gel derived Pb(Zr0.52,Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) thin film capacitors were integrated for the piezoelectric actuation. We have used the resonant frequency change of microtransducer upon mass increase as a sensing mechanism. The resonant frequency of the microtransducer was measured by analysis of electrical signals from microtransducer such as impedance, capacitance, phase and dielectric loss. The fundamental resonant frequencies of the microcantilever, microbridge and microdiaphragm with similar dimension (∼300 μm) were about 26 kHz, 260 kHz and 290 kHz, respectively. The mass sensitivities of bare microtransducers were measured by metallic thin film deposition and analysis of spectral responses from microtransducers. When various microtransducers are compared, the microcantilever exhibited the highest gravimetric sensitivity factor (Δf/Δm×f0 = 694.4 cm2/g), followed by the microbridge and microdiaphragm. However, the microbridge showed the highest mass sensitivity (Δf/Δm = 137.5 Hz/ng) among those transducers.