Design and Optimization of a Highly Sensitive and Linearity Piezoresistive Pressure Sensor Based on a Combination of Cross Beam-Peninsula-Membrane Structure

The sensitivity and linearity trade-off problem has become the hotly important issues in designing the piezoresistive pressure sensors. To solve these trade-off problems, this paper presents the design, optimization, fabrication, and experiment of a novel piezoresistive pressure sensor for micro pressure measurement based on a combined cross beam - membrane and peninsula (CBMP) structure diaphragm. Through using finite element method (FEM), the proposed sensor performances as well as comparisons with other sensor structures are simulated and analyzed. Compared with the cross beam-membrane (CBM) structure, the sensitivity of CBMP structure sensor is increased about 38.7 % and nonlinearity error is reduced nearly 8%. In comparison with the peninsula structure, the maximum non-linearity error of CBMP sensor is decreased about 40% and the maximum deflection is extremely reduced 73%. Besides, the proposed sensor fabrication is performed on the n-type single crystal silicon wafer. The experimental results of the fabricated sensor with CBMP membrane has a high sensitivity of 23.4 mV/kPa and a low non-linearity of −0.53% FSS in the pressure range 0–10 kPa at the room temperature. According to the excellent performance, the sensor can be applied to measure micro-pressure lower than 10 kPa.