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Variable Response Of A Thermally Tuned Mems Pressure Sensor, Robert A. Lake, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.
Variable Response Of A Thermally Tuned Mems Pressure Sensor, Robert A. Lake, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.
Faculty Publications
A typical microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) pressure sensor consists of a thin, deformable membrane and sensing element such as a piezoresistive element which is used to measure the amount of deflection in response to an applied pressure. Previous efforts demonstrated that buckled membranes, from silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers, can be thermally tuned via joule heating. By applying heat to the membrane through a resistive heating element, compressive stress is induced in the membrane causing it to buckle further out of plane and increasing its overall stiffness response. It is demonstrated that by increasing the stiffness of the membrane, the response …
Improved Sensitivity Mems Cantilever Sensor For Terahertz Photoacoustic Spectroscopy, Ronald A. Coutu Jr., Ivan R. Medvedev, Douglas T. Petkie
Improved Sensitivity Mems Cantilever Sensor For Terahertz Photoacoustic Spectroscopy, Ronald A. Coutu Jr., Ivan R. Medvedev, Douglas T. Petkie
Faculty Publications
In this paper, a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) cantilever sensor was designed, modeled and fabricated to measure the terahertz (THz) radiation induced photoacoustic (PA) response of gases under low vacuum conditions. This work vastly improves cantilever sensitivity over previous efforts, by reducing internal beam stresses, minimizing out of plane beam curvature and optimizing beam damping. In addition, fabrication yield was improved by approximately 50% by filleting the cantilever’s anchor and free end to help reduce high stress areas that occurred during device fabrication and processing. All of the cantilever sensors were fabricated using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and tested in a custom …