A

Progress Report
on
MEMS based Sensors
IstSem Ph.D

Supervisors:
Prof. R.P Yadav
Professor
Dept. of ECE

Submitted By:
Dr. Vijay Janyani
Associate Professor
Dept. of ECE

Ashish Kumar
2014REC9520

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur
JAIPUR, RAJASTHAN, INDIA
May, 2015

Course
Micro/Nano Electro Mechanical Systems
Research Methodology and Design of Experiment

Course code
ECT 634
MET 900

Grade
AB
AA

Course Work Details

In Micro/Nano Electro Mechanical Systems, different fabrication techniques of MEMS
devices were studied. Along with these, working principles of different types of sensors and
actuators (Magnetic, piezoelectric, piezoresistive, Thermal) and packaging techniques also
studied.
Finding Research problem, literature survey, writing the technical paper, different types of
analyzing the experimental data are some of the topics that were studied in Research
methodology and design of experiment which enabled me to concentrate more on my area of
research.

Literature Review
MEMS or Micro Electro Mechanical Systems is a technique of combining Electrical and
Mechanical components together on a chip, to produce a system of miniature
dimensions.By miniature, we mean dimensions less than the thickness of human hair.
MEMS technology can be used in different areas such as automotive domain (Airbag
Systems, Vehicle Security Systems, and Automatic Door Locks, etc.), Consumer domain
(Appliances, Car and Personal Navigation Devices, Active Subwoofers, etc.), Industrial
domain (Earthquake Detection and Gas Shutoff, Machine Health, Shock and Tilt Sensing,
etc.), Biotechnology (Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) microsystems for DNA
amplification and identification,

Biochips for detection of hazardous chemical and

biological agents, Microsystems for high-throughput drug screening and selection, BioMEMS in medical and health related technologies from Lab-On-Chip to biosensor &
chemosensor, etc.).
According to Instrument Society of America, Sensor means a device which provides a
usable output in response to a specified input. Here the output is an electrical quantity and the
input is a physical quantity. In other words it can be said that sensor is a link between
physical world and electrical signal. Therefore sensors can be of various kinds depending on

the input parameter like temperature sensor, pressure sensor, gas sensor,Flow rate sensor,
biosensor etc.
MEMS based sensors on the other hand offer superior performance to conventional ceramic
sensors on account of their low power consumption, Small size, faster response, unique
thermal manipulation, ease of array fabrication, capabilities and compatibility to CMOS
(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) circuits. MEMS based sensors are usually
fabricated using a standard CMOS process have the additional advantages of being readily
realized by commercial foundries and amenable to the inclusion of on-chip electronics.
MEMS based sensors have been widely used for various sensing applications such as gas
sensors, flow rate sensors and infrared emitters etc. [1, 2]. The metal oxidesensors require
low power consumption, fast responsetime and uniform temperature distribution over the
surface of sensingmaterial [3]. These sensors also requiregood mechanical stability at high
temperatures. Microelectro mechanical systems (MEMS) based Microhotplates aremost
suitable for this purpose and have been widely used in sensors because of their low power
consumption [1, 2].
In general, the fabricated dielectric membranes are of twotypes: (1) micro-bridge or
suspended type and (2) closed type. The closed membranes are fabricated by backsideetching of silicon using either deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technique or wet etching
technique. However, themicro-bridges are fabricated by front side etching of silicon. In this
type, the active layers are suspended on a cavitythrough the support of two or four beams.
Due to extremelylow thermal mass, micro-bridge type membrane consumesslower power
than closed membrane [6].
Recently, It was studied thatuniform temperature of membraneand reliability for MEMS
sensor on silicon substrate can be greatly enhanced bydouble spiral design of membrane [710]. Also, it was studied that MEMS based sensors can be fabricated using graphene [11-14].

Scope of work
Todays modern industrialized society has brought to the world numerous goods & services,
as well as a series of problems related to technological development. Ever increasing
industrialization makes it absolutely necessary to constantly monitor & control air pollution
in environment, factories, laboratories, hospitals.Micro-hotplates have been used in gas

sensors, integrated circuits, actuators and fluidics systems in fields such as electronic noses,
electronics, space, biomedical and micro total analysis systems. Depending on the
applications, different fabrication techniques were used to thermally isolate the heating
element. Silicon bulk and surface micromachining (front or backside), porous silicon,
silicon carbide, Silicon On Insulator (SOI) and low-stress silicon nitride are techniques and
materials used to suspend the heater on a membrane. Efforts were also made to integrate the
electronics on chip using a CMOS compatible fabrication process in combination with some
post-processing steps specific to microsystems [11].
In conclusion, the proposed devices have great demands in 1.Process control industries,
2.Environmental monitoring, 3.Space applications, 4.Biomedical applications,5.Detection
of harmful gases in mines, 6.Biosensor,etc. And will have great impact on upcoming science
and technology for sensing purpose.

References
1) Afridi, M. Y., Suehle, J. S., Zaghloul, M. E., Berning, D. W., Hefner, A. R., Cavicchi, R. E., & Taylor,
C. J. (2002). A monolithic CMOS microhotplate-based gas sensor system. Sensors Journal,
IEEE, 2(6), 644-655.
2) Belmonte, J. Cerda, J. Puigcorbe, J. Arbiol, A. Vila, J. R. Morante, N. Sabate, I. Gracia, and C. Cane.
"High-temperature low-power performing micromachined suspended micro-hotplate for gas sensing
applications." Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical 114, no. 2 (2006): 826-835.
3) Vogel, D., B. Michel, and J. R. Morante. "Thermal and mechanical analysis of micromachined gas
sensors." Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering13, no. 5 (2003): 548.
4) Graf, M., Barrettino, D., Baltes, H. P., &Hierlemann, A. (2007). CMOS hotplate chemical
microsensors. Springer Science & Business Media.
5) Paul DavimJ, Jackson MJ Nano and micromachining Wiley, Hoboken(2010)
6) Xu, Lei, Tie Li, XiuliGao, and Yuelin Wang. "Development of a reliable micro-hotplate with low
power consumption." Sensors Journal, IEEE 11, no. 4 (2011): 913-919.
7) Prasad, Mahanth. "Design, development and reliability testing of a low power bridge-type
micromachined hotplate." Microelectronics Reliability (2015).
8) Prasad, Mahanth, R. P. Yadav, V. Sahula, and V. K. Khanna. "FEM simulation of platinum-based
microhotplate using different dielectric membranes for gas sensing applications." Sensor Review 32,
no. 1 (2012): 59-65.
9) Prasad, Mahanth, R. P. Yadav, V. Sahula, and V. K. Khanna. "Design and simulation of Pt-based
microhotplate, and fabrication of suspended dielectric membrane by bulk micromachining." In 16th
International Workshop on Physics of Semiconductor Devices, pp. 85491C-85491C. International
Society for Optics and Photonics, 2012.
10) Briand, D., et al. "Micro-hotplate, an useful concept for gas sensing, fluidics and space
applications." Proc. of Microfabricated Systems and MEMS V, 198th ECS Meeting, Phoenix, USA.
2000.
11) Cai, Chun-Hua, and Ming Qin. "High-performance bulk silicon interdigital capacitive temperature
sensor based on graphene oxide." Electronics Letters 49.7 (2013): 488-490.
12) Fercana, George, et al. "An investigation into graphene exfoliation and potential graphene
application in MEMS devices." SPIE MOEMS-MEMS. International Society for Optics and
Photonics, 2011.
13) Zhu, Shou-En, et al. "Graphene based piezoresistive pressure sensor." Applied Physics Letters
102.16 (2013): 161904.

Dr. Mohd. Salim

(Member, DREC)

Prof. R.P.Yadav
(Supervisor)

Dr. C. Periasamy
(Member, DREC)

Dr. Vijay Janyani

(Supervisor)

Dr. Ghanshyam Singh

(Member, DREC)

Dr. Lava Bhargava

(Convener, DPGC)