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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO. 6, DECEMBER 2006

MEMS-Capacitive Pressure Sensor Fabricated Using Printed-Circuit-Processing Techniques

Jithendra N. Palasagaram and Ramesh Ramadoss, Member, IEEE

AbstractMicroelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based capacitive pressure sensors are typically fabricated using siliconmicromachining techniques. In this paper, a novel liquid-crystal polymer (LCP)-based MEMS-capacitive pressure sensor, fabricated using printed-circuit-processing technique, is reported. The pressure sensor consists of a cylindrical cavity formed by a sandwich of an LCP substrate, an LCP spacer layer with circular holes, and an LCP top layer. The bottom electrode and the top electrode of the capacitive pressure sensor are dened on the top side of the LCP substrate and the bottom side of the top-LCP layer, respectively. An example pressure sensor with a diaphragm radius of 1.6 mm provides a total capacitance change of 0.277 pF for an applied pressure in the range of 0100 kPa. Index TermsCapacitive sensors, liquid-crystal polymer (LCP), microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), pressure sensors, printed-circuit board (PCB) MEMS.

Fig. 1.

LCP-based MEMS capacitive pressure sensor conguration.

I. I NTRODUCTION N RECENT years, there has been considerable interest in the development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fabricated using printed-circuit board (PCB)-processing techniques combined with specializedmicromachining techniques such as laser machining, plasma etching, etc. [1][3]. The advantages of the PCB-based MEMS approach include low cost, compatibility with organic substrate-based Multichip module-laminate (MCM-L) technology [4], ease of integration with embedded passives and surface mount electronics, suitability for batch fabrication in large panels, and high-volume manufacturing. A large array of pressure sensors can be batch fabricated using roll-to-roll exible printed-circuit-processing systems for large-area applications. In this paper, novel liquid-crystal polymer (LCP)-based capacitive pressure sensors fabricated using printed-circuit-processing techniques are presented. LCP is a thermoplastic material with unique structural and physical properties. The advantages of LCP include low cost, versatility of fabrication such as lowtemperature thermal bonding, mechanical exibility, and less moisture absorption compared to other polymer lms used in MEMS processes.

II. S ENSOR C ONFIGURATION AND F ABRICATION A. Sensor Conguration The conguration of the LCP-based MEMS-capacitive pressure sensor is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of three layers: 30-mil-thick high-temperature LCP substrate (R/ex 3850 from Rogers Corporation) with 0.5-m-thick copper metallization, 2-mil-thick high-temperature LCP top layer (R/ex 3850) with 0.5-m-thick copper metallization, and a 2-mil-thick lowtemperature LCP spacer layer (R/ex 3600). The pressure sensor is comprised of a cylindrical cavity formed by a sandwich of the top layer (with the top electrode), the spacer layer (with the circular hole), and the substrate (with the bottom electrode). The bottom electrode and the top electrode inside the cavity form a parallel-plate-capacitor conguration. The circular portion of the LCP top layer located above the circular hole (diameter 2a) of the spacer layer serves as the movable diaphragm of the pressure sensor. When the pressure (outside the sensor cavity) is increased above the atmospheric level, the diaphragm deects downward, increasing the capacitance of the sensor from its initial value. B. Sensor Fabrication

Manuscript received March 27, 2006; revised June 28, 2006 and July 10, 2006. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Dr. Andre Bossche. J. N. Palasagaram is with the General Electric Company Health Care, Aurora, OH 44202 USA (e-mail: jithendra.palasagaram@ge.com). R. Ramadoss is with the Alabama Microelectronics Science and Technology Center (AMSTC), Department of Electrical Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5201 USA (e-mail: ramadra@auburn.edu). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JSEN.2006.884430

Photographs of the three layers of the pressure sensor are shown in Fig. 2. The sensor-fabrication process involves two major steps. In the rst step, the metallization layers on the top side of the LCP substrate and the bottom side of the top LCP layer are patterned by photolithography and wet-etching processes to form the bottom electrode and the top electrode of the capacitive pressure sensor, respectively. In the second step, various circular holes with diameters of 14 mm are dened in

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the LCP spacer layer by mechanical punching. The lamination process involves alignment of the three layers followed by a thermocompression-bonding process at normal atmospheric pressure using a carver press. The thermocompression bonding is performed at a load of 400 lb and at a temperature of 275 C. These optimal-bonding parameters are used to ensure proper bonding. During the bonding process, both the temperature and pressure are maintained for 30 min, and the assembly is cooled down to room temperature before the load is released. After bonding, the pressure inside the sealed cavity of the pressure sensor is at atmospheric level, and no deformation was observed in the diaphragm. A photograph of the fabricated 5 3 pressure-sensor-array prototype is shown in Fig. 2(d). The fabrication and assembly processes employed here are described in [1].

C. Results and Discussion

Fig. 2. Photographs of (a) an LCP top layer with copper top electrodes, (b) an LCP spacer with circular holes, (c) an LCP substrate with a common bottom electrode, and (d) a 5 3 capacitive pressure sensor array prototype. (Color version available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org).

Experimental results for an example pressure sensor with a diaphragm radius of 1.6 mm are discussed here. The diameter and area of the top electrode are 2.5 mm and 4.9 mm2 , respectively. The pressure sensor was characterized inside a pressure chamber using a universal capacitive readout (UCR) IC MS3110 used in conjunction with its evaluation board MS3110BDPC from Microsensors. A plot of the output voltage from the MS3110 UCR circuit is shown in Fig. 3(a). The voltage change for an applied pressure of 0100 kPa is about 0.15 V, and the sensitivity is 1.39 mV/kPa. The sensitivity value reported here is comparable to that of the Kapton polyimide lmbased pressure sensor reported in [3]. The sensitivity could be improved by increasing the diaphragm diameter or by reducing the thickness of the spacer layer. The initial-capacitance value of the sensor is about 1.08 pF. The relative capacitance change with the applied pressure is shown in Fig. 3(b). The relativecapacitance change of the sensor is 0.277 pF for an applied pressure of 0100 kPa.

III. C ONCLUSION A MEMS capacitive pressure sensor array fabricated using low-cost printed-circuit-processing techniques is reported. An example pressure sensor with a diaphragm radius of 1.6 mm is discussed. The proposed pressure sensors are suitable for integration with (system-on-package) SOP-type Microsystems [4] fabricated using low-cost MCM-L technologies. R EFERENCES
[1] R. Ramadoss, S. Lee, Y. C. Lee, V. M. Bright, and K. C. Gupta, Fabrication, assembly, and testing of RF MEMS capacitive switches using exible printed circuit technology, IEEE Trans. Adv. Packag., vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 248254, Aug. 2003. [2] X. Wang, L.-H. Lu, and C. Liu, Liquid crystal polymer (LCP) for MEMS: Processes and applications, J. Micromech. Microeng., vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 628633, May 2003. [3] S.-P. Chang and M. G. Allen, Demonstration for integrating capacitive pressure sensors with read-out circuitry on stainless steel substrate, Sens. Actuators A, Phys., vol. 116, no. 2, pp. 195204, Oct. 2004. [4] R. Tummala, Fundamentals of Microsystems Packaging. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Fig. 3. Experimental results for an example pressure sensor with a diaphragm radius of 1.6 mm (a) output voltage from MS3110 UCR and (b) relative capacitance change for various applied pressure of 0100 kPa. (Color version available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org).