A review of MEMS based humidity sensors

Introduction:

Humidity is amount of water vapor present in the air at a give

temperature. In general relative humidity is a measured using
the sensors it is defined as the ratio of water vapor present in the
air to the maximum water the air can hold at a given
temperature. The measurement of humidity is essential in
numerous applications, to predict weather, humidity calculation is
very essential for food storage industry to keep the food fresh,
domestic appliances like air conditioning, medical equipment etc.
Hence there is need for sensing humidity

Humidity sensors are classified based on the working principle.

They are (i) capacitive based (ii) measuring resistance (iii) using
optical techniques (iv) gravimetric techniques. Conventional
humidity sensors are bulkier and have high operating and
manufacturing cost. Therefore there is a necessity for
miniaturized humidity sensors. MEMS based humidity sensors
can overcome these disadvantages like low cost, bulk
manufacturing, small size and low operating cost. In literature
already different kinds of MEMS based humidity sensors are
available and few of them are commercially available. In general
the important parameters to measure a sensor are fast response
time, high sensitivity, no hysteresis, linearity in response, low
power consumption.

In this report a review of MEMS based humidity sensors is

presented. The report focuses on mainly three different kinds of
sensing mechanism (i) capacitive (ii) resistive (iii) thermal
conductive. In the first section two humidity sensors available in
the literature are presented following a thermal conductive based
sensing method. In the later section the resistive based humidity
sensor is discussed. The report ends with conclusions.
Capacitive based sensing:

Among all the existing humidity sensors capacitive based

humidity measurements are used extensively. These sensors
work on the principle of measuring the change of the dielectric
constant of the thin films in between the electrodes. They are
extensively used because the dielectric constant of the thin film
polymers varies significantly upon water intake. The main
variations in the existing capacitive humidity sensors are the
pattern of the electrodes and the sensing material i.e. thin film
polymers. Figure shows different kinds of electrode patterns.

Lei Gu et al has shown that the interdigitated electrode pattern is

optimum for humidity sensing. Figure shows the layout of the
sensor. The fabrication is done in six stages and are presented in
Figure . Initially a layer of SiO2 is deposited on the substrate upon
this layer polysilicon and SiO2 are deposited. Aluminium which
acts as the electrodes is etched onto the SiO2 structures. A
passivation layer is coated onto the aluminium electrodes.
Polyimide was coated completely on top this surface. Figure
shows the sem image of the sensor.

The sensor was tested by connecting to a printed circuit board

and keeping it in an environmental chamber and the saturation
solution. Figure [] shows the measured capacitance vs relative
humidity at 27degrees. Sensitivity is defined as the amount of
change of capacitance to change in relative humidity. This can be
obtained from the slope of the figure[].
Hysteresis is the delay in response of a given input. To measure
hysteresis the sensor is operated from 20 -80% humidity and no
significant hysteresis was observed. There was 3% error at 80%
which could be reduced by heating the heater of the sensor.

Stability he sensor was also stable

Response speed

Second method for capacitive sensing

Lazarn et al proposed an advanced humidity sensor which detects

a change of xx% in the relative humidity. This is very useful in
medical respiratory systems. In this sensor instead of using
conventional electrode pattern innovative way was utilized so that
maximum contact is possible. The main substrate is removed
from the electrode and is hanged by support of trusses. Capillary
wicking technology is used to pull the polymer in the solution.

The fabrication process is bit complex compared to the previous

method. Figure [] shows the steps in the fabrication process.
Initially a fabricated CMOS is taken and anisotropic oxide
reaction-ion etch (RIE) is performed to expose the silicon
substrate and release the structure.

Drop-on-demand ink jet system is used to selectively deposit the

polymer in the solution between the electrodes.

This is has a 0.18% sensitivity to the relative humidity.

The applicaitonssss

The measurements

Commercialization blaaahhh

Thermal conductive based sensing:

While the capacitive based humidity sensors exploit the change of

dielectric constant, the thermal conductive based sensing
measures the change in the thermal conductivity of the medium.
Burak okcan et al proposed a thermal conductive based humidity
sensor. The basic working principle is two pn junction diodes are
placed in such a way that one of them is isolated and the other is
exposed to ambience the relative change in the voltage due to
change in thermal conductance of the medium is measured and
thus the humidity is measured.

To have a significant change in thermal conductivity

measurements the pn junction diodes are heated to 250deg cel.

Figure shows a thermal conductive based humidity sensor.

Conclusions:

References: