Design and Fabrication of Silicon Flow Sensor For Detecting Air Flow

유속 감지를 위한 실리콘 유량센서의 설계 및 제작

Silicon flow sensor that can detect the velocity and direction of air flow was designed and fabricated by integrated circuit process and bulk micromachining technique. The flow sensor consists of three-layered dielectric diaphragm, a heater at the center of the diaphragm, and four thermopiles surrounding the heater at each side of diaphragm as sensing elements. This diaphragm structure contributes to improve the sensitivity of the sensor due to excellent thermal isolation property of dielectric materials and their tiny thickness. The flow sensor has good axial symmetry to sense 2-D air flow with the optimized sensing position in the proposed structure. The sensor is fabricated using CMOS compatible process followed by the anisotropic etching of silicon in KOH and EDP solutions to form I$\mu$ m thick dielectric diaphragm as the last step. TCR(Temperature Coefficient of Resistance) of the heater of the fabricated sensors was measured to calculate the operating temperature of the heater and the output voltage of the sensor with respect to flow velocity was also measured. The TCR of the polysilicon heater resistor is 697ppm/K, and the operating temperature of the heater is 331$^{\circ}C$ when the applied voltage is 5V. Measured sensitivity of the sensor is 18.7mV/(m/s)$^{1/2}$ for the flow velocity of smaller than 10m/s.