Microfabricated thermal absolute-pressure sensor with on-chip digital front-end processor

Author

Mastrangelo, Carlos H. ; Muller, Richard S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

26

Issue

12

fYear

1991

fDate

12/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1998

Lastpage

2007

Abstract

A thermal absolute pressure sensor of the heated microbridge type has been integrated with an active bias circuit and an 8-b successive approximation register analog/digital (A/D) converter. The chip, which contains about 1000 devices, is sensitive to variations in absolute gas pressure between 10 and 10⁴ Pa, and it is implemented in a 4-Um NMOS technology merged with the microsensor process. The output of the chip is a robust digital signal adequate for transmission in high noise environments

Keywords

MOS integrated circuits; digital integrated circuits; electric sensing devices; elemental semiconductors; large scale integration; pressure transducers; silicon; vacuum gauges; 10 to 10⁴ Pa; 4 micron; 8 bit; NMOS technology; absolute gas pressure; active bias circuit; heated microbridge type; microsensor process; on-chip digital front-end processor; polycrystalline Si microbridge; robust digital signal; semiconductors; successive approximation register ADC; thermal absolute-pressure sensor; transmission in high noise environments; vacuum gauges; Heat transfer; Integrated circuit technology; Laboratories; MOS devices; Microsensors; Registers; Substrates; Thermal conductivity; Thermal sensors; Wire;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.104194

Filename

104194