Fast on-wafer electrical, mechanical, and electromechanical characterization of piezoresistive cantilever force sensors
Validation of a technological process requires an intensive characterization of the performance of the resulting devices, circuits or systems. The technology for the fabrication of Micro and Nanoelectromechanical systems is evolving rapidly, with new kind of device concepts for applications like sen...
| Autores: | , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2012 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/64465 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/64465 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Piezoresistive cantilever On-wafer Electromechanical Force sensor |
| Sumario: | Validation of a technological process requires an intensive characterization of the performance of the resulting devices, circuits or systems. The technology for the fabrication of Micro and Nanoelectromechanical systems is evolving rapidly, with new kind of device concepts for applications like sensing or harvesting are being proposed and demonstrated. However, the characterization tools and methods for these new devices are still nor fully developed. Here, we present an on-wafer, highly precise and rapid characterization method to measure the mechanical, electrical and electromechanical properties of piezoresistive cantilevers. The set-up is based on a combination of probe-card and atomic force microscopy (AFM) technology, it allows accessing many devices across a wafer and it can be applied to a broad range of MEMS and NEMS. Using this set-up we have characterized the performance of multiple submicron thick piezoresistive cantilever force sensors. For the best design we have obtained a force sensitivity RF=158 uV/nN, a noise of 5.8 uV (1Hz-1kHz) and a minimum detectable force (MDF) of 37 pN with a relative standard deviation of sigma=8%. This small value of sigma, together with a high fabrication yield >95%, validates our fabrication technology. The devices are intended to be used as bio-molecular detectors for the measurement of intermolecular forces between ligand and receptor molecule pairs. |
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