Ultra-small high‐temperature pressure sensor chips fabricated in single‐layer (111) SOI wafers

Abstract

This paper presents a 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm tiny-sized high-temperature piezoresistive pressure sensor fabricated with a thin-film under bulk single-sided micromachining process from the front-side of single-layer (111) silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer. The (111)-device layer of the SOI wafer is specifically selected to optimize the piezoresistor performance where the SiO2 buried layer isolates the piezoresistors from the handle substrate. And the (111)-handle layer is employed to subtly construct a single-crystalline-silicon beam-island combining with a very thin but uniform poly-silicon diaphragm for realization of both low nonlinearity and high sensitivity. Without double-sided micromachining process and wafer bonding used, a tiny sensor-chip size of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm is achieved, which is required in wind-tunnel systems for measuring pressure distribution at high temperature. The testing results of the fabricated sensor show high sensitivity of 0.15 mV V−1 kPa−1 for 150 kPa measure range and satisfactory linearity of ±0.11% FS (full scale) at ambient temperature. At 350 °C, the overall accuracy is 0.17% FS and the thermal hysteresis is 0.22% FS. The temperature coefficient of zero-point offset of the sensor is tested as low as 0.01% °C−1 FS and the temperature coefficient of sensitivity is −0.07% °C−1 FS within the whole temperature range from −55 °C to 350 °C. Featuring the advantages of high accuracy and high-yield low-cost fabrication, the tiny-sized high-temperature pressure sensors exhibit promising perspectives in the field of aerospace industry including wind-tunnel applications.