Highly sensitive 4H-SiC pressure sensor at cryogenic and elevated temperatures
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Hoang-Phuong, Phan
Toan, Dinh
Dowling, Karen M
Foisal, Abu Riduan Md
Senesky, Debbie G
Nam-Trung, Nguyen
Dzung, Viet Dao
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Abstract
The slow etching rate of conventional micro-machining processes is hindering the use of bulk silicon carbide materials in pressure sensing. This paper presents a 4H-SiC piezoresistive pressure sensor utilising a laser scribing approach for fast prototyping a bulk SiC pressure sensor. The sensor is able to operate at a temperature range from cryogenic to elevated temperatures with an excellent linearity and repeatability with a pressure of up to 270 kPa. The good optical transparency of SiC material allows the direct alignment between the pre-fabricated piezoresistors and the scribing process to form a diaphragm from the back side. The sensitivities of the sensor were obtained as 10.83 mV/V/bar at 198 K and 6.72 mV/V/bar at 473 K, which are at least a two-fold increment in comparison with other SiC pressure sensors. The high sensitivity and good reliability at either cryogenic and elevated temperatures are attributed to the profound piezoresistive effect in p-type 4H-SiC and the robust p-n junction which prevents the current from leaking to the substrate. This indicates the potential of utilising the laser scribing approach to fabricate highly sensitive bulk SiC pressure sensors for harsh environment applications.
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Materials and Design
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156
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© 2018 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence, which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
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Manufacturing engineering
Materials engineering
Mechanical engineering
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)
Piezoresistive
Pressure sensor
Silicon carbide