Poly-SiC capacitive pressure sensors made by wafer bonding

Author

Du, Jiangang ; Ko, Wen H. ; Mehregany, Mehran ; Zorman, Christian A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Case Western Reserve Univ., Cleveland, OH

fYear

2005

fDate

Oct. 30 2005-Nov. 3 2005

Abstract

SiC is an attractive material for harsh environment micromachined transducers due to its outstanding electrical, mechanical and chemical properties. In this paper, we report on the successful fabrication of SiC-based capacitive pressure sensors made from low-stress, heavily-doped polycrystalline 3C-SiC (poly-SiC) films. The low stress films enable the use of conventional vacuum wafer bonding techniques to realize diaphragm-based sensors that incorporate sealed vacuum cavities. Sensors with diaphragms ranging from 200 mum to 1 mm in diameter were successfully fabricated by wafer bonding. The sensors operate as touch-mode devices and exhibit a linear response between 17.0 and 25.3 PSI at 400degC, which was the maximum operating temperature of the setup

Keywords

capacitive sensors; polymer films; pressure sensors; silicon compounds; wafer bonding; 0.20 to 1 mm; 400 C; SiC; capacitive pressure sensor; diaphragm-based sensor; low stress film; touch-mode device; vacuum wafer bonding; Capacitive sensors; Chemical sensors; Chemical transducers; Fabrication; Mechanical factors; Mechanical sensors; Silicon carbide; Temperature sensors; Vacuum technology; Wafer bonding;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Sensors, 2005 IEEE

Conference_Location

Irvine, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9056-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSENS.2005.1597937

Filename

1597937