Micromachines (Oct 2022)

An Ultra-Compact MEMS Pirani Sensor for In-Situ Pressure Distribution Monitoring

  • Lan Zhang,
  • Jian Lu,
  • Hideki Takagi,
  • Sohei Matsumoto,
  • Eiji Higurashi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13101686
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 10
p. 1686

Abstract

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In this study, we designed a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) Pirani vacuum sensor with a compact size. Specifically, the sensor was successfully fabricated based on the Pirani principle and using a commercial eight-inch MEMS foundry process. The sensor fabrication process was carried out using only four photomasks and the proposed sensor had an ultra-compact fabricated size (2). A vacuum measurement system was set up to comprehensively evaluate the fabricated sensors. The results demonstrated that the MEMS Pirani vacuum sensor has a high responsivity in the low-pressure domain from 100 Pa. The proposed sensor with a 953.0-Ω heater exhibited an average responsivity of 11.9 mV/Pa in the preferred range of 100 to 7 Pa and 96.0 mV/Pa in the range of 7 to 1 Pa. The sensor may be potentially suitable in many applications, such as vacuum indicators for processing equipment, health monitoring systems for social infrastructure, and medical and health applications.

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