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27 May 2016 Double-meander spring silicon piezoresistive sensors as microforce calibration standards
Gerry Hamdana, Hutomo Suryo Wasisto, Lutz Doering , Chunlei Yan, Lei Zhou, Uwe Brand, Erwin Peiner
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Abstract
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 <inline-formula< <mml:math display="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"< <mml:mrow< <mml:mi<p</mml:mi< </mml:mrow< </mml:math< </inline-formula<-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 (<inline-formula< <mml:math display="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"< <mml:mrow< <mml:mo form="prefix"<≤</mml:mo< <mml:mn<1000</mml:mn< <mml:mtext<  </mml:mtext< <mml:mi<μ</mml:mi< <mml:mi mathvariant="normal"<N</mml:mi< </mml:mrow< </mml:math< </inline-formula<). 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 <inline-formula< <mml:math display="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"< <mml:mrow< <mml:mn<0.03</mml:mn< <mml:mo<±</mml:mo< <mml:mn<0.071</mml:mn< <mml:mtext<  </mml:mtext< <mml:mi<mV</mml:mi< <mml:mo</</mml:mo< <mml:mi mathvariant="normal"<V</mml:mi< </mml:mrow< </mml:math< </inline-formula<. In terms of its linearity, the fabricated device exhibits a small nonlinearity of <inline-formula< <mml:math display="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"< <mml:mrow< <mml:mo form="prefix"<<</mml:mo< <mml:mn<3</mml:mn< <mml:mo<%</mml:mo< </mml:mrow< </mml:math< </inline-formula<, which leads this sensor to be appropriate for precise microforce standard.
CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Gerry Hamdana, Hutomo Suryo Wasisto, Lutz Doering , Chunlei Yan, Lei Zhou, Uwe Brand, and Erwin Peiner "Double-meander spring silicon piezoresistive sensors as microforce calibration standards," Optical Engineering 55(9), 091409 (27 May 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.55.9.091409
Published: 27 May 2016
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CITATIONS
Cited by 8 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Sensors

Silicon

Calibration

Sensor calibration

Piezoresistive sensors

Finite element methods

Etching

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