Surface Micromachined Pressure Sensor with Internal Substrate Vacuum Cavity

A surface micromachined piezoresistive pressure sensor with a novel internal substrate vacuum cavity was developed. The proposed internal substrate vacuum cavity is formed by selectively etching the silicon substrate under the sensing diaphragm. For the proposed cavity, a new fabrication process including a cavity side-wall formation, dry isotropic cavity etching, and cavity vacuum sealing was developed that is fully CMOS-compatible, low in cost, and reliable. The sensitivity of the fabricated pressure sensors is 2.80 mV/V/bar and 3.46 mV/V/bar for a rectangular and circular diaphragm, respectively, and the linearity is 0.39% and 0.16% for these two diaphragms. The temperature coefficient of the resistances of the polysilicon piezoresistor is 0.003% to 0.005% per degree of Celsius according to the sensor design. The temperature coefficient of the offset voltage at 1 atm is 0.0019 mV and 0.0051 mV per degree of Celsius for a rectangular and circular diaphragm, respectively. The measurement results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed pressure sensor as a highly sensitive circuit-integrated pressure sensor.