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UNIVERSITY OF JORDAN

Drag_Force Mico_flow
sensor
MEMS Project
Prof.Mohammad Killany
Mohhammad Alahdab 2121354 Laith Al-Ramahi 0116385

Table of contents :
Abstract --------------------------------------2
Introduction---------------------------------2
Principle and design ----------------------3
Fabrication of Sensor---------------------6
Detecting the direction of the wind--8
Dealing with temperature variaition-8
Conclusion----------------------------------8
Refrences-----------------------------------9

1-Abstract :
A drag force wind sensor using the torque of cantilever to measure the
velocity of wind is presented in this
paper. The sensor consists of a thin silicon plate and two short
cantilevers which connect with the plate
and silicon substrate and will bend when wind blow to the plate. The
drag force sensor was , analyzed with fluid mechanics principle and
fabricated using MEMS-based technology.
When setting the input 0.5 V we obtain a sensor capable of high
sensitivity 60 V/(m/s) at the
high wind velocity about 18 m/s. The results of experiments suggest that
the designed sensor can be used
to detect wind velocity and determine wind directions.

2-Introduction :
Wind velocity measurement is a very important factor in various
fields such as aeronautics, meteorology, sealing and farming.
The conventional wind sensor comprises small mechanical apparatus
such as propeller and cup anemometers, or consists of thermal
element such as hot wire anemometers, or has acoustic part such
acoustic radar as
In this paper a kind wind sensor based on drag
force fabricated with simply MEMS process is developed.
The drag force sensor has quadratic wind velocity dependence
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like the lift force sensor.When the wind blows to the sensor it will
transform the energy of wind into the mechanical energy. So the
information of the wind is obtained by measuring the mechanical
energy. The sensor is designed as a structure with one plate
and two short cantilevers in which the mechanical energy mainly
concentrate in cantilevers and is measured by the strain change
of cantilevers. The sensor has shown good symmetry when wind
blows to it in the positive and negative direction. When the wind
blows to the sensor in positive direction the strain of resistance on
the two cantilevers will be tensile strain and in negative direction
the strain will be compression strain.
In this paper a method for wind velocity sensors structure
design, strain calculation and simulation is introduced. A formula
about the strain of cantilevers and the wind velocity is deduced
using the mechanical principles and material characteristics on
which the strain changes of the two cantilevers are based. The sensor
is also simulated in ANSYS CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)
software using the model solid92. The results of the strain of simulation
and calculation are almost similarity. A detailed developing
processes based on MEMS technology are given. The sensor was
tested in small wind tunnel in positive and negative direction,
analyzed the curve of experiments and drawn a conclusion that
designed sensor can be used to detect wind velocity and determine
wind directions.

3-Princible and Design :


3.1 Structure and Design :

The designed sensor structure consists of one plate which is


3000 m in length, 2500 m in width and 10 m in thickness and
two cantilevers which are 500 m in length, 500 m in width and
10 m in thickness. Two cantilevers connect with the plate and
silicon substrate and will bend when wind blow to the plate. The
dimension of the sensor is 9 mm 8 mm 0.35 mm. The simplified
model used in this sensor is shown in Fig. 1. For measuring their
strain changes Pt thin film resistors each of which includes eight
resistors which are 400 m in length, 10 m in width and 100 nm
in thickness and seven resistors which are 40 m in length, 20 m
.in width and 100 nm in thickness are deposited on the cantilevers
In this model we mainly use the plate to receive the drag force of
wind and use the cantilevers to measure the drag force of wind.
It is known in fluid dynamics that the drag force is proportional
to the square of wind velocity and will cause the deflection of cantilevers.
When wind flowblows to the sensor in positive or negative
direction the drag force will cause the deflection of cantilevers in
different direction.
Thus we can get the
information of wind
by
measuring the strain
caused by the
deflection of the
cantilevers.
Usually the strain is
so small that the
change of the
resistances
caused by strain is
difficult to obtain. For
platinum, the
resistivity
does not vary with strain when the cross-sectional dimensions are
much larger than the grain size and the Poissons ratio is typically in
the range of 0.30.5, typical gauge factor of platinum is in the range
of 26. Therefore we measure the strain of the wind sensor
by connecting the two resistances on cantilever and the two resistances
on substrate in aWheatstone bridgewhich turns the change
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of the resistance to the ratio of the change of the resistance. In the


designed senor the change of four platinum resistances caused by
environment factors are always not equal. Although theoretically

the Wheatstone bridge is free of temperature compensation but it


is not because of the technical processes.We design a temperature
resistance for the future compensation of the sensor.

2.2 Principle :
The strain of the cantilever can be get by :

where M is the torque of cantilevers which caused by the deflection


of the plate, H is the thickness of the cantilever, E is theYoungs modulus
of the material of cantilever, and I is the torque of the inertia
of the cross-section of cantilever respectively. Given the wind flow
is uniformly blow to the plate. The torque M is given by
where L is the total length of the plate Lp and cantilever Lc illustrated
by :
F is the force of wind denoted by

where
is the local drag coefficient calculated by empirical formulae
and depends on the structure of materials, A is the area of
the plate and cantilever in the direction facing the wind flow, is
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the density of air and V is the mean velocity of the wind.


The plate and the two cantilevers of the designed sensor are
symmetrical with center dash dot line shown as Fig. 2(a).
so we divide the sensor into two parts. One of them has one cantilever
and half plate. Thus the torque of one cantilever Ms can be denoted
by

The term I of Eq. (1) is the moment of inertia of the cross-section


of cantilever and is approximated by

where W is the width of the cantilever and H is the thickness of the


cantilever. In this paper the materials of the designed sensor consist
of SI3N4, SiO2 and silicon. So the term E of Eq. (1) can be calculated
by

where Es, En and Eo are the Youngs modulus of silicon, SI3N4 and
,SiO2 respectively, Hs, Hn and Ho are the thickness of silicon layer
silicon nitride layer and silicon dioxide layer respectively and H is
the sum of Hs, Hn and Ho. Thus from Eqs. (1) and (5)(7) we can
obtain the strain of one cantilever :

When forming the platinum resistances on the cantilever and


the platinum resistances on substrate into a Wheatstone bridge
showed as Fig. 2(b) we can get the output of sensor by :

where Uo is the output voltage of the bridge, U is the input


voltage of the bridge and K is the gauge factor of platinum.

3. Fabrication of sensor
The fabrication process starts with a thermal oxidation process
forming a silicon dioxide layer that the thickness is about 7000
from a cleaned, double-side polished, n-type and single-crystal

silicon wafer (thickness = 350m, diameter = 3 in.). Then a


silicon nitride layer is deposited about 2000 by the LPCVD (low
pressure chemical vapor deposition) process. The goal of the silicon
nitride layer is to protect the silicon dioxide layer and silicon
layer in the front and back wet anisotropic etching process. Because
the nitride silicon grown by LPCVD process has tensile stress about
1000MPa, the dioxide silicon grown by thermal oxidation process
has pressure stress about 300MPa; The stress balance should be
considered in the fabrication of the sensor.
After thermal oxidation process and LPCVD process, chromium
and platinum thin film are sputtered on the silicon wafer where the
chromiumis used as the interlayer. By removing the unwanted
platinum
by lift-off process we get the figure of platinum resistances
and electrodes where the platinum resistance of the cantilever is
about 450. Then the SF6 plasma etching is used to remove the non
masked silicon nitride to pattern the figure of the sensor. Because
platinum is difficult to etch by diluted HF acid the silicon dioxide
layer is directly etched in diluted HF acid till that the non masked
dioxide silicon is disappeared. After removing the front silicon
dioxide

and silicon nitride;


the wafer is etched in
KOH at 80 C until
the
depth of front figure
reaches about 10m.
After the front
etching
the same processes as
removing the front
silicon and nitride
are repeated at the
back of the silicon
Front side mask
wafer. By protecting
the front pattern of
the wafer we etch the
Back side mask
back of wafer by
KOH
about 5 h at 80 C
until the figure is occurred. The whole fabrication
Fig.4
processes of the cantilever are illustrated
in Fig. 4.
Finally the wafer is diced into pieces and
the wires are bonded to
pads which connect the outer electric
circuit. An unpackaged wind
velocity sensor is illustrated in Fig. 5.

Mask for platinum

5.Detecting the direction of wind


folw :
The platinum resistors is deposited only on
one side of the wafer. So when an air flows from the side where the
resistors are deposited , a tensile stress will be produced and a tensile
strain will happen to the resistors.If the air flows in the opposite
direction, a compression strain will happen to the resistors. So the
output voltage for the first direction of air flow will be in opposite
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with the output voltage caused by the second direction of the air flow.
we can sense the other perpendicular directions by using another
perpendicular sensor the first one.

6. Dealing with Temperature variation


Due to air flow the temperature of the sensor may vary; to avoid this
problem from affecting our measurement ; we use platinum resistors
which varies with temperature very well, If a an air flow decreases the
temperature of the resistors, all the values of the resistor will decrease
at the same rate. And the output voltage caused by the tensile strain
will be the difference between the voltage variation caused by the
tensile strain and the thermal effect of the platinum resistors.
If the output voltage is caused by compression strain , it will be the
sum of the voltage variation caused by the compression strain and the
thermal effect of the platinum resistors ( because its negative ).

7. Conclusion
A drag force silicon plate wind velocity sensor has been designed
and fabricated. The principle for measuring wind velocity was
illustrated.
The figures shown in earlier section suggested that
the sensor can be used to measure the wind velocity and positive
and negative directions when the sensor is perpendicular to the
airflow.
The directions, besides positive and negative directions, can
be measured by perpendicular encapsulating two designed sensors.
It has a challenge to the portable or handhold anemometer
for its MEMS based advantages of small size, solid sensing
mechanism
and real-timemeasurement. Further researches are necessary
to improve the sensitivity in low wind velocity and enhance the
precision of wind velocity and direction.

8. References :
-Lidong Dua,b, Zhan Zhaoa,, Cheng Panga,b, Zhen Fanga, Drag force micro solid
state silicon plate wind velocity sensor, Sensors and Actuators A: Physical.
-Ulrich Buder, Ralf Petz, Moritz Kittel, Wolfgang Nitsche, Ernst Obermeier,
AeroMEMS polyimide based wall double hot-wire sensors for flow separation
detection, Sensors and Actuators A 142 (2008) 130137.

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