A HIGH-STABLE PRESSURE SENSOR BASED ON A SOI HETEROSTRUCTURE AND MEMS TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INTELLIGENT INSTRUMENTS

Leonid Sokolov

Abstract

The time stability of pressure transducers is a necessary condition which provides the measurement and computation of ? flight data by an aircraft computer with required accuracy. <BR />As compared with Weston Aerospace up-to-date highstable electromechanical pressure transducers, which use a resonance effect in a vibrating cylinder, semiconductor microelectromechanical sensors (SMEMS) have advantages in possible integration with a signal microprocessor circuit and in group manufacturing based on advanced MEMS technologies.<BR />Honeywell is known to be conducting efforts in replacing electromechanical sensors with microelectromechanical ones in an aircraft flight data system.<BR />Electrical p-n junctions in conventional silicon sensors are prerequisites for the time instability of sensors and an aircraft flight data measurement system as a whole. Conventional micromechanical piezoresistive sensors, which contain electric p-n junctions, have a limited operational temperature range due to the exponential dependence of reverse current from the p-n junction temperature as known in the semiconductor physics <i>I</i>₀ ~ <i>n</i>_i² ~ exp[-&Delta; <i>E</i>_F/(<i>k T</i>)].<BR />The capabilities of measurement error correction using microprocessor techniques for transfer characteristic linearization, temperature compensation and other parameters become significantly complicated due to the instability of the transfer characteristic of conventional SMEMS.<BR />The developed concept, which eliminates the usage of p-n junctions in SMEMS, forms the basis for the proposed solutions and the principles of developing integral high-stable SOI-based membrane-type pressure sensors with a monolithic tensoframe.

Keywords

MEMS sensor, SOI, monolithic tensoframe

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IMEKO TC

TC14 - Measurement of Geometrical Quantities

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