Fabrication of Wireless Micro Pressure Sensor Using the CMOS Process.docVIP

Sensors 2009, 9, 8748-8760; doi:10.3390/OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Article Fabrication of Wireless Micro Pressure Sensor Using the CMOS Process Ching-Liang Dai 1,*, Po-Wei Lu 1, Chyan-Chyi Wu 2 and Chienliu Chang 3 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 402 Taiwan; E-Mail: player0912@ 2 Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, Tamkang University, Tamsui, 251 Taiwan; E-Mail: ccwu@.tw 3 Corporate RD Headquarters, Canon Inc., Tokyo 146-8501, Japan; E-Mail: clchang6@.tw * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: cldai@.tw; Tel.: +886-4-2284-0433; Fax: +886-4-2287-7170. Received: 30 July 2009; in revised form: 19 October 2009 / Accepted: 26 October 2009 / Published: 30 October 2009 Abstract: In this study, we fabricated a wireless micro FET (field effect transistor) pressure sensor based on the commercial CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) process and a post-process. The wireless micro pressure sensor is composed of a FET pressure sensor, an oscillator, an amplifier and an antenna. The oscillator is adopted to generate an ac signal, and the amplifier is used to amplify the sensing signal of the pressure sensor. The antenna is utilized to transmit the output voltage of the pressure sensor to a receiver. The pressure sensor is constructed by 16 sensing cells in parallel. Each sensing cell contains an MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) and a suspended membrane, which the gate of the MOS is the suspended membrane. The post- process employs etchants to etch the sacrificial layers in the pressure sensor for releasing the suspended membranes, and a LPCVD (low pressure chemical vapor deposition) parylene is adopted to seal the etch holes in the pressure. Experimental results show that the pressure sensor has a sensitivity o