Sensitivity Enhancement of SAW Pressure Sensor Based on the Crystalline Direction

This work presents the sensitivity enhancement of AlN based surface acoustic wave (SAW) pressure sensor fabricated on the Si (100) wafer. Based on the theoretical analysis, a novel concept is proposed to improve pressure sensitivity with crystalline direction. The effect of wave propagation along < 100> and < 110> crystalline direction on pressure sensitivity of the SAW sensor has been studied by the finite element method. The simulation results indicate that the Si (100) based SAW sensor oriented in < 110> direction shown to possess high sensitivity compared to < 100> direction. The increase in sensitivity along the < 110> direction is due to a larger $\gamma $ (velocity sensitivity to strain coefficient) value that results in increased velocity and large frequency shift. Two SAW pressure sensors, PS $_{< 100>}$ and PS $_{< 110>}$ with wave propagation along < 100> and < 110> directions, respectively, have been fabricated on Si (100) wafer to verify the sensitivity enhancement concept. Both sensors have been tested for the pressure range from 0–2 MPa. The measured sensitivity for the PS $_{< 100>}$ and PS $_{< 110>}$ are obtained as 112.68 ppm/MPa and 203.83 ppm/MPa, respectively, Which is significantly improved by 80%. Additionally, the repeatability and linearity of PS $_{< 110>}$ have been measured and the deviation of the measured pressure sensitivity curve from the best linear fit is very small. The obtained results show that the developed sensor design has sufficiently high sensitivity with linear response and can be used for high pressure sensing applications.