Out-of-plane MEMS-based mechanical airflow sensor co-integrated in SOI CMOS technology

•Monolithic integration of capacitive airflow sensor with CMOS on thin film SOI technology.•Ultra low power capacitive detection with C-f ring oscillator converter.•10% variation oscillating frequency under 120m/s parallel airflow stimulus.•Simulation/measurement chain of beam deflection under airfl...

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Veröffentlicht in:Sensors and actuators. A. Physical. 2014-02, Vol.206, p.67-74
Hauptverfasser: André, Nicolas, Rue, Bertrand, Scheen, Gilles, Flandre, Denis, Francis, Laurent A., Raskin, Jean-Pierre
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:•Monolithic integration of capacitive airflow sensor with CMOS on thin film SOI technology.•Ultra low power capacitive detection with C-f ring oscillator converter.•10% variation oscillating frequency under 120m/s parallel airflow stimulus.•Simulation/measurement chain of beam deflection under airflow.•Generic dry release offering multisensing opportunities. This paper demonstrates the monolithic integration of an airflow sensor based on out-of-plane movable cantilevers with a CMOS integrated circuit providing small footprint and low-power sensing. Airflow is sensed by mechanical deflection of cantilevers without static power consumption contrary to classical thermal flow sensors based on micro-heater. The interfacing circuit is a CMOS ring oscillator (RO), fabricated on the same chip with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, offering unique properties such as harsh environment resistance and lower power consumption. Moreover, the additional post-processing steps required by the built-in of out-of-plane cantilevers are minimum thanks to the use of standard CMOS materials and dry etching of the sacrificial layer. The developed microsystem demonstrates 10% variation of the RO frequency for an airflow varying from 0m/s to 120m/s, with a static power consumption of the order of 1μW.
ISSN:0924-4247
1873-3069
DOI:10.1016/j.sna.2013.11.017