Diaphragm design guidelines and an optical pressure sensor based on MEMS technique

The design guidelines for micro diaphragm-type pressure sensors have been established by characterization of the relationships among diaphragm thickness, side length, sensitivity, and resonant frequency. According to the study, the thickness need to be thin and the side length need to be small in order to get the sensitive diaphragm with high resonant frequency. A Fabry-Perot based pressure sensor has been designed based on the guidelines, fabricated and characterized. In principle, the sensor is made according to Fabry-Perot interference, which is placed on a micro-machined rectangular silicon membrane as a pressure-sensitive element. A fiber-optic readout scheme has been used to monitor sensor membrane deflection. The experimental results show that the sensor has a very high sensitivity of 28.6 mV/Pa, resolution of 2.8 Pa, and up to 91 kHz dynamic response. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.