Piezoresistive pressure sensor with high sensitivity for medical application using peninsula-island structure

Abstract

A novel micro-electromechanical systems piezoresistive pressure sensor with a diagonally positioned peninsula-island structure has high sensitivity for ultra-low-pressure measurement. The pressure sensor was designed with a working range of 0–500 Pa and had a high sensitivity of 0.06 mV·V⁻¹·Pa⁻¹. The trade-off between high sensitivity and linearity was alleviated. Moreover, the influence of the installation angle on the sensing chip output was analyzed, and an application experiment of the sensor was conducted using the built pipettor test platform. Findings indicated that the proposed pressure sensor had sufficient resolution ability and accuracy to detect the pressure variation in the pipettor chamber. Therefore, the proposed pressure sensor has strong potential for medical equipment application.

Keywords

MEMS / low pressure sensor / peninsula-island / ultra-high sensitivity / medical application

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51375378, 91323303, and 51421004), the National Key Research & Development (R&D) plan (Grant No. 2016YFB1200103-04), the 973 Program (Grant No. 2015CB057402), and the 111 Program (Grant No. B12016).

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