Double-meander spring silicon piezoresistive sensors as microforce calibration standards

作者:Hamdana Gerry*; Wasisto Hutomo Suryo; Doering Lutz; Yan Chunlei; Zhou Lei; Brand Uwe; Peiner Erwin
来源:Optical Engineering, 2016, 55(9): 091409.
DOI:10.1117/1.OE.55.9.091409

摘要

A transferable force calibration standard based on a silicon microelectromechanical sensor has been designed, fabricated, and characterized for micrometrology applications. Two essential elements of double-meander springs and full piezoresistive etched p-silicon-on-insulator Wheatstone bridges (WBs) are integrated to the sensor for enhancing the device's sensitivity and eliminating the current leakage during an active sensing operation, respectively. The design process is supported by three-dimensional finite element modeling to select the optimal proposed sensors as well as simulating their mechanical and electrical properties in the desired force range (<= 1000 mu N). To fabricate the microforce sensors, a bulk micromachining technology is used by frequently involving an inductively coupled plasma deep reactive ion etching at cryogenic temperature. Several optical and electrical characterization techniques have been utilized to ensure the quality of the fabricated WBs, where their measured offset voltage can be down to 0.03 +/- 0.071 mV/V. In terms of its linearity, the fabricated device exhibits a small nonlinearity of < 3%, which leads this sensor to be appropriate for precise microforce standard.

  • 出版日期2016-9