Monolithic SOI-MEMS Capacitive Pressure Sensor

with Standard Bulk CMOS Readout Circuit

Miikka Ylimaula, Markku Aberg, J yrki Kiihamaki, Hannu Ronkainen
VTT Information Technology, Microelectronics, P.O.B. 1208, FIN-02044, Finland
Tel. +35894566603, Fax +35894567012, e-mail: Mii!&a.Ylimaula@vtt.fi
Abstract:
We report an integrated monolithic micromechanical
capacitive pressure sensor circuit based on novel
method f or fabricating pressure detecting vacuum
cavities into buried oxide of SOI-wafer. The method
allows fabricating the readout circuit with standard
bulk CMOSprocess. The readout circuit of the pressure
sensor is a lowpower CMOS relaxation oscillator.
1. Introduction
Nowadays there is an increasing need for low-cost
absolute pressure sensors, especially in automotive
industry. The monolithic SoC approach offers many
advantages compared to.a hybrid or multi-chip structure.
Firstly, monolithic sensors reduce paracitics and extemal
noise because the pressure signal is processed in close
proximity to the transducer. The overall die area is
typically smaller, too.
There are some process descriptions of integrated MEMS
in the literature [1,2,3,4,5]. Usually they suffer from
compromises made between the two technologies:
polysilicon MEMS is difficult to prepare over the IC, or
the IC must he fabricated after making complex
embedded polysilicon structures. In either case device
properties are compromised or expensive process
technology is needed. In our modular approach,
however, there is a synergy between MEMS and IC, both
MEMS and IC are made of the same material and, for
example, MEMS isolation can he used also for reduction
of transistor parasitic capacitances and the metallization
structures are common for both.
2. Process description
Bonded silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers are used as
starting material. The handle wafer is heavily doped p-
type silicon and the resistivity of the p-type structure
layer is around I O Rcm to accommodate conventional
CMOS. Structure layer and buried oxide thicknesses are
8 pm and 1 pm, respectively. So the structure layer
behaves like hulk silicon from the CMOS processing and
device point of view.
The vacuum ' cavities forming the sensor devices
(schematically shown in Fig. 1.) are fabricated using
Plug-up sequence [6,7] as follows:
1. An etch-stop layer is deposited on SO1 wafers.
2. An array of approximately micron-sized openings is
etched through the device layer of SO1 with slight
overetching into the buried oxide to form antistiction
bumps.
3. Semipermeable polysilicon is deposited in such a
way that pinholes remain at the bottom of each well.
4. Buried oxide is locally removed through pinholes.
5. The wells are plugged up with a layer of LPCVD
polysilicon film. The cavities remain in vacuum.
6. After etchback, the IC-compatible, single crystal
silicon surface is revealed.
Besides active cavities for microelectromechanical
devices, substrate contacts and isolation trenches are
generally needed. The schematical cross-section of these
sub-modules is shown in Fig. 2. In this study the
integrated substrate contacts were omitted. In the future
runs in-situ doped polysilicon will he used for substrate
contacts.
The DRIE etched isolation trenches are refilled with
oxide after cavity formation, just before the formation of
CMOS wells. During the cavity formation the area
designated for CMOS is protected by a stack of selected
thin film.
The integrated circuit process selected for this
demonstration is a 1 pm gate length bipolar enhanced
molybdenum gate CMOS. In principle also any
polysilicon CMOS process compatible with the p-type
structure layer conductivity could he used instead. Only
the low voltage CMOS pari of Ihc process was used for
the circuit presented here. The BeCMOS process is
optimised for analog and mixed-signal circuits. It uses a
p-type substrate with triple well. Besides the standard n-
and p-wells the process has a deep n-well with a shallow
p-well inside it. This structure is used for isolating
analog NMOS transistors and vertical pnp transistors. An
extra well was added to the MEMS region to enhance the
conductivity of the structure layer.. The higher doping
level is needed to reduce the temperature and voltage
sensitivity of the anchor area of MEMS devices.
Tailoring of the structure layer doping profile by blanket
implantation before wafer bonding is also an altemative
to make the top electrode more conductive.
CMOS portion of the process uses self-aligned
molybdenum gate with 20 nm gate oxide. Molybdenum
gate metal is used also as a bottom electrode for metal-
insulator-metal capacitors. Stacked floating gate MOS
61 1
0-7803-8 108-4/03/$17.0002003 IEEE.
Etch acces holes in
Silicon substrate
Figure 1. Schematic cross-section of a plugged-up SO1
cavity before etchback with typical dimensions.
transistors with capacitively connected control electrodes
can be used as EEPROM memory cells. The bipolar
transistors, ifused, are processed before the CMOS gate
process. Both npn and pnp transistors have conventional
.triple diffused structure with implanted emitters. The key
properties of the processed circuit elements-are tabulated
in the Table 1. Mosi of the circuit elements are modular
and they can be omitted from the fabrication process if
so desired. The high voltage NMOS is an important
option if electrostatic drive of capacitive resonant
elements is required.
- Table 1. List of circuit elements of the modular
BeCMOS-process.
The wafer processing was mostly done ai 'VTT
Information Technology facilities.
3. Pressure sensing cavity
The structure of pressure sensor is presented in Figure 2.
The top electrode is isolated from CMOS-bulk with a
oxide~trench. Substrate iihighly dbped and it forms the
large chip wide bottom electrode. The bottom electrode
can be connected to readout circuit with three different
methods:.
1. ~ With capacitive coupling to CMOS-hulk. This
method is simplest hut it is limited to cases where
bottom electrode can be at lowest voltage. Good
capacitive coupling (Cbp>>Cs) requires that cavity
area is smaller than the non-cavity chip area.
2. With resistive path through polysilicon plug (Fig 1.).
This method allows us to connect the bottom
electrode freely to the readout circuit, this is usually
preferred method.
3. With external wiring.
In this work the first method was used. The simplified
electrical model of the sensor is presented in Figure 3. Cs
is the capacitance of the vacuum cavity and the buried
oxide layer between cavity and oxide trench, Ctr is the
capacitance of the trench oxide and Cbp is the
capacitance between bottom-electrode (substrate) and
CMOS-hulk.
Since the pressure sensing range is determined by the
ratio of cavity diameter to height of structure layer,
proper sensor range can he controlled in design by
calculating proper value for the diameter. In this work
we used hexagonal shaped sensor with 300 nmdiameter.
Figure 2. Side view of pressure sensor,. a) (optional)
electrical substrate contact through SO1 buried oxide, not
used in this work, b) trench isolation and c) vacuum
cavity.
TOP "I. .i; 2;-
Crr T,T
CMOS-bulk
Figure 3. Electrical model
4. Readout circuit
The capacitance measurement is based on the relaxation
oscillator principle. The sensor capacitor is modulated by
pressure and this modulates the frequency of the
oscillator. The principle of the readout circuit, is
presented in Figure 4. .
A more detailed schematic of the circuit is in Figure 5.
The readout circuit is a CMOS current controlled astable
multivibrator [8,9] and it uses constant current source
and sink method for oscillation, that is the timing
Capacitor or the sensor capacitance is charged and
discharged alternately by constant ,net current. The
differential pair Mnl-Mn2 senses the voltage across the
timing capacitor and controls current sources Mp5 and
Mn7 to initiate charge and discharge cycles. Since the
timing capacitor is continuously charged by Il=lMps, the
discharging tail current I2=I&, must he larger than I,,,.
612
- -
Figure 5. The readout circuit.
To make waveform symmetrical, the tail current IMn7
must he 21Mp5. When I u , , , = ~ I ~ ~ ~ , the frequency.of the
oscillator is
where VI and V,, voltages over CO, are switching points
of the multivibrator. The current mirror Mp6-Mp7
provides positive feedback. Moreover, the bias circuit
[lo], formed by Mpl-Mp4 and MnlO-Mnll, is included
to provide gate voltages to current sources Mp5, Mp9,
Mn7 and Mn8. Inverter (Mn9 and MplO) is used as a
buffer.
voo A
Figure 4. The principle of the readout circuit. CO is the
total sensor capacitance.
5. Experimental results
The photograph of the fabricated prototype is presented
in Figure 6. Output waveform (Figure 7.) was measured
with HP54602B-oscilloscope. Measured current
consumption was 21 uA at 3 V supply voltage. Measured
pressure response is presented in Figure 8. Pressure
range is 1-4 bar and linearity error is 37.5 % of the full-
scale output.
1 5 2 s 3 3 5
A ~* OI YI L p'8rru.e ,bar]
Figure 8. Pressure response
The temperature dependency of the sensor capacitance
was measured in various pressures (Figure 9.). It IS
caused mainly by temperature dependencies of parasitic
capacitances.
Figure 6. Microphotograph of fully integrated pressure
sensor.
613
6. Conclusions
The operation of the fully integrated pressure sensor was
demonstrated and its properties were discussed. The
readout circuit presented here has only the core part of a
full sensor system. The MEMS process used sets no
restrictions on the CMOS process for electronics and all
auxiliary blocks: compensation, calibration, converters,
DSP or communications circuits can easily be added to
the circuit.
In future to eliminate temperature dependency of
parasitic capacitances a reference cavity must be utilised
and the capacitance ratio or the capacitance difference of
the cavities must be measured, perhaps with some kind
of switched capacitor circuit.
2.851 I
, , ,
2.45
20 30 40 50 60 70 60 90 100
Temperature [c]
Figure 9. Temperature dependency of vacuum cavity.
Acknowledgements
This work was partly funded by Finnish Technology
Agency, Okmetic Oyj, VTI Technologies Inc. and Micro
Analog Systems Oy. Part of the BeCMOS processing
was made at Micro Analog Systems production facilities
in Espoo. Tapani Vehmas, Ari Haira and especially
Teija Hakinen are gratefully acknowledged for their
contribution to the results achieved. We acknowledge
Heikki Kuisma at VTI Technologies Inc. for valuable
discussion conceming pressure sensor design. Moreover,
we thank J aakko Ruohio at VTI Technologies Inc. for his
contribution to measurements.
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