Surface micromachined pressure transducers

Abstract Typical IC processing is fundamentally two dimensional; sensors are three-dimensional structures. In surface micromachining, two-dimensional IC processing is extended to sensor structures by the addition of one or more sacrificial layers which are removed by lateral etching. The resulting sensor structures involve the substrate and one or more deposited films which form the intended micromechanical component. The concepts of this type of sensor manufacturing are readily demonstrated by considering absolute pressure transducers in some detail. Absolute pressure transducers involve a vacuum-sealed cavity and a deformation sensing technique. The cavity is formed from the substrate and a low-pressure chemical vapor deposited polycrystalline silicon film. The mechanical properties of this film must be controlled well enough to allow the device to be designed. This implies morphological control during processing. Optimized films which do exhibit controlled compressive or tensile strains exclude oxygen or nitrogen and are therefore not modified by extended hydrofluoric acid etches. Their mechanical behavior is monitored by micromechanical test structures which measure Euler buckling and thereby determine the value of the built-in strain. The cavity vacuum is established by reactive sealing. Long-term vacuum integrity is achieved by a low-stress silicon nitride barrier which also acts as a dielectric isolation barrier. Sensing is accomplished via deposited polysilicon resistors. These devices behave like metal resistors in terms of their temperature coefficient of resistance and noise figure. Their piezoresistive behavior is larger than that of typical metal film structures and smaller than that of single-crystal resistors. Pressure sensors with four diaphragms, two active and two inactive, have been constructed and optimized towards manufacturability. The measured performance is excellent and agrees with the predictions of the design algorithm.

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