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JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 21, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2012

JMEMS Letters
Tuning the Sensitivity of a Metal-Based Piezoresistive
Sensor Using Electromigration
S. M. Mohanasundaram, Rudra Pratap, and Arindam Ghosh
AbstractWe report a simple method to enhance the piezoresistive
sensitivity of a gold film by more than 30 times and demonstrate it
using a microcantilever resonator. Our method depends on controlled
electromigration that we use to tune the resistance and sensitivity of the
piezoresistive sensor. We attribute the enhancement in strain sensitivity
to the creation of an inhomogeneous conduction medium at a predefined location by directed and controlled electromigration. We understand
this phenomenon with tunnelingpercolation model, which was originally
hypothesized to explain nonuniversal percolation behavior of composite
materials.
[2012-0174]
Index TermsCantilever, electromigration, percolation, piezoresistance, sensitivity.

I. I NTRODUCTION
In any electromechanical sensor, the physical quantity to be measured is basically converted into a deflection of some elastic structure. Efforts are underway to achieve high sensitivity to deflection,
coupled with good signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the entire range
of sensing. Although off-chip readout methods such as laser beam
deflection and interferometry are still being used, self-sensing methods
such as piezoresistive transduction offer several crucial advantages.
In particular, eliminating the need for optics simplifies the instrumentation and allows device dimensions to be scaled well below the
optical wavelength, thereby paving the way for nanoelectromechanical
systems (NEMS). Moreover, piezoresistive transduction works well in
both liquid and gas phases, and large array sensors can be realized [1].
Silicon has been the material of choice for piezoresistive sensors
for many decades. Silicon piezoresistors are routinely used in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) [2][4], due to their large gauge
factor (), defined as the ratio of relative change in resistance to strain.
Typically, ranges from 30 in polycrystalline silicon to 100 in
single-crystal silicon [5], whereas it is only about one to three in continuous metal films [6]. Thus, in spite of their simplicity of fabrication,
metallic piezoresistors have not been popular in MEMS due to their
low sensitivity to strain. More recently, however, it has been shown that
metals could outperform semiconductors as piezoresistive material
at nanoscale due to their low electrical resistivity and high carrier
density [7].
It is well known that discontinuous metal films possess large
[6]. This is due to the exponential dependence of resistance on the
separation between metal islands. The same idea has been exploited
to achieve very high (100) in thin films of functionalized gold
Manuscript received June 25, 2012; revised July 14, 2012; accepted
July 17, 2012. Date of publication August 22, 2012; date of current version
November 27, 2012. This work was supported in part by the Department of
Science and Technology, Government of India. Subject Editor D. Elata.
S. M. Mohanasundaram and A. Ghosh are with the Department of Physics,
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India (e-mail: contactmohan@
gmail.com; mohan_nano@physics.iisc.ernet.in; arindam@physics.iisc.ernet.in).
R. Pratap is with the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India (e-mail: pratap@mecheng.iisc.ernet.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JMEMS.2012.2211579

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic diagram of the bilayer cantilever. Electrostatic force

FE between the cantilever and the substrate is applied from sinusoidal voltage
source at frequency f . Piezoresistor is biased at different frequencies f + f .
(b) SEM image of a typical device. (c) Frequency response detected by the optical transduction (laser Doppler vibrometer) and the piezoresistive transduction
(with pristine film).

nanoparticles [8]. In spite of great potential, however, these systems

face barriers to applicability because large is also accompanied by
very high specific resistance (105 106 /sq), undoing the primary
advantage of a metal-based piezoresistive transducer. Hence, enhancing strain sensitivity of metallic piezoresistors without sacrificing the
resistivity-related advantages would have a significant impact on selfsensing MEMS and NEMS technology.
In this letter, we demonstrate a simple way to tune the strain sensitivity of thin gold film that acts as a piezoresistive sensor integrated to
a silicon dioxide microcantilever. Our method is based on a guided
electromigration process that causes local inhomogenization in the
metal film. Controlled electromigration has long been used to create
break junctions in thin metal wires [9]. However, our intention is not
to create a break junction but to carve an inhomogeneous conducting
medium out of the metal film with multiple atomic scale tunneling gaps
and constrictions, at a predefined location in the cantilever structure.
Through precise control of the electromigration damage, we have
found the strain sensitivity of the gold film to increase by 30 times.
II. E XPERIMENTS
A. Device
We have fabricated a bilayer cantilever with silicon dioxide as
the structural layer and gold as the piezoresistive sensor. Fig. 1(a)
shows a schematic diagram of the device along with part of the
measurement setup which will be discussed later. Fig. 1(b) shows
a scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of a typical device.
Starting with a silicon (100) wafer, a 750-nm-thick silicon dioxide
layer is grown using thermal wet oxidation at 1100 C. The cantilever

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structure is patterned using electron-beam lithography and silicon

dioxide etching in buffered hydrofluoric acid. The silicon dioxide
structure is released by silicon bulk micromachining using tetramethylammonium hydroxide. The depth of the trench below the cantilever
is about 8 m. Subsequently, a 10-nm titanium adhesion layer and
a 50-nm gold film are deposited by thermal evaporation. A notch is
incorporated on one leg of the cantilever for dual purposes: first, to
promote electromigration by enhancing the local current density and
temperature and, second, to provide stress concentration when the
cantilever is bent. This design ensures that the maximum stress is
reached exactly where the electromigration damage occurs.
B. Measurements
The cantilever is actuated using electrostatic force (FE ) by applying
a sinusoidal voltage to the doped silicon substrate [see Fig. 1(a)]. The
actuation voltage is of the form Va [1 + cos(2f t)], ensuring cantilever oscillation at f . The resulting oscillation in strain 0 cos(2f t)
induces a change in the resistance of the gold piezoresistor of the form
R + R cos(2f t). We have used heterodyne downmixing technique
[10] to detect this change in resistance. In this method, the piezoresistive sensor is biased with ac voltage at slightly different frequencies
f + f with f  f . The piezoresistor acts as a frequency mixer
[10] and generates a signal at f . This f component is detected using a lock-in amplifier (SR830) with phase acquired using an external
mixer. The rms amplitude of this f component scaled by half of the
rms bias voltage across the sensor directly gives the relative change in
resistance R/R. The actuation frequency f is varied across the fundamental resonance frequency f0 , and the frequency response is built.
To estimate , we also performed optical measurement of the
frequency response. Using a laser Doppler vibrometer, we measured
the displacement of the free end of the cantilever while applying
electrostatic actuation identical to that for piezoresistive transduction.
The resonance curves measured in ambient conditions using both
optical and electrical methods are shown for comparison in Fig. 1(c).
Using beam theory, we estimate the uniaxial strain at the top surface
of the notch region (at resonance) to be 0 = 5.4 106 . Combining
this estimate with the electrical data, we get 1.38, which is in the
expected range for pristine gold film.
Next, we tune by performing controlled electromigration on
the gold piezoresistor. In order to precisely control the rate of electromigration, we have developed an adaptive closed-loop control
system [11]. The system passes a large dc current (current density
1011 A/m2 ) through the piezoresistive sensor while closely monitoring its resistance and dynamically adjusting the current magnitude. At
specified increments of R, the electromigration is stopped to characterize the sensitivity. The frequency response is measured with a much
lower bias current (current density 109 A/m2 ) to ensure that there is
no electromigration during measurement. The actuation voltage is kept
the same for all frequency response measurements. Electromigration
and all subsequent measurements were done in vacuum (pressure
 102 mbar).
III. R ESULTS
The evolution of frequency response with progressive electromigration damage is shown in Fig. 2. Electromigration not only increases
R but also enhances the sensitivity of R to cantilever deflection.
Along with the strain sensitivity, f0 and the quality factor (Q) were
also found to vary weakly with R, as shown in Fig. 3(a) and (b),
respectively. The change in Q can be attributed to changes in damping
coefficient, arising possibly from changes in internal friction due
to electromigration-induced damage. Any variation in the vacuum
pressure would also contribute to the variation in Q. The variations

Fig. 2. Piezoresistively detected frequency response at different stages of

electromigration.

Fig. 3. Variations of (a) resonance frequency and (b) quality factor due to
electromigration-induced damage. (c) Strain sensitivity as a function of sensor
resistance on a loglog scale. Right axis shows the estimated gauge factor. Inset
shows part of the same data (which follow logarithmic behavior indicated by a
solid line) as a semilog plot.

in f0 can result from changes in residual stress and redistribution of a

small amount of mass during electromigration.
For sensitivity analysis, we take R/R at f = f0 and normalize
it with Q to compensate for the small changes in strain (as 0 Q,
at resonance). Fig. 3(c) shows this measure of strain sensitivity
R(f0 )/QR as a function of R. Strain sensitivity at R 1420
has increased by a factor of 33 compared to that of the pristine film.
Extrapolating from the pristine condition, this is equivalent to 45,
which is comparable to that of silicon. Further electromigration pushes
the system close to percolation threshold (discussed below) and causes
the film to break (R > 1 M).
IV. D ISCUSSION
The inhomogeneity of the damaged film (see Fig. 4) causes electron
transport through multiple constrictions and tunnel barriers. We can
consider this as a percolative network, with resistance taking the form
R = R0 (p pc ) , where R0 is a constant and p and pc are the fractions of the conducting region and percolation threshold, respectively.
The exponent is universal in conventional bimodal conductance
distribution but becomes nonuniversal and strain dependent when
conductance distribution in the network has a power law tail [12]. From
the nonuniversal percolation model, it can be shown (by substituting
(3) in (17) of [12]) that

R
d ln
ln
d
R0

(1)

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V. C ONCLUSION
We have demonstrated a simple technique to tune the strain sensitivity of gold piezoresistors. Using a controlled and guided electromigration damage, we have achieved 30-fold enhancement in piezoresistive
sensitivity by locally inhomogenizing the metal film. We have shown
that a nonuniversal percolative transport may be at the origin of
the enhanced sensitivity. These films display effective gauge factor
comparable to that of silicon and promise further enhancement with
appropriate engineering of the sensor.
R EFERENCES

Fig. 4. SEM image of notch region after electromigration showing the inhomogeneous gold film that forms the percolation network.

A logarithmic divergence of strain sensitivity as p pc has been

predicted in such tunnelingpercolation models and experimentally
observed in three dimensional carbon black and RuO2 composites
[12]. The inset of Fig. 3(c) shows the logarithmic dependence of
R(f0 )/QR over a significant range of R, where the solid line highlights the logarithmic behavior, with a and b as fitting parameters (here,
a = 2.3 108 and b = 4.5). Since R(f0 )/QR is proportional to
, its dependence is essentially the same as (1), thus supporting the
model.
In this sample, the last few data points of sensitivity deviated
from the log R dependence. We attribute these deviations to the fact
that the point of maximum strain does not exactly coincide with the
point of maximum resistance in the piezoresistor. When the latter
moves relative to the former, slope a is expected to change. Another
observation is that the electromigration step sometimes results in a
drop in resistance, which happened in this case from R 1990
to R 1420 , while the sensitivity continued to increase. It is
worth noting that, in the absence of large current densities, the sensor
resistances and sensitivities are found to be very stable. However, this
stability deteriorates with further electromigration when the system is
pushed very close to the percolation threshold. Finally, the SNR of the
sensor degrades slowly with R for this sample due to the increase in
Johnsons noise. However, we have sufficient evidence from further
investigations (to be reported in the future) to say that SNR of the
inhomogenized piezoresistor can be engineered to be substantially
higher than that of the pristine metal film using our method.

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