IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 38, NO.
5, MAY 2017
Development of Silicon Nanowire-Based NEMS
Absolute Pressure Sensor Through
Surface Micromachining
Songsong Zhang, Liang Lou, and Yuandong (Alex) Gu
Abstract — This letter reports on a nano-electro-
mechanical system (NEMS) pressure sensor with
p-doped silicon nanowires (average cross-sectional
area ∼ 100 nm2 ) as piezoresistive sensing elements.
Taking advantage of surface micromachining, an absolute
pressure-sensing device is developed using front-side
isotropic etching. In contrast to the previously reported
silicon nanowire (SiNW) pressure sensor processed
with bulk micromachining through the backside deep
reactive ion etching (DRIE), nonlinearity has been reduced
to 0.31% (BFSL). In addition, the performance variations
across the wafer have been significantly reduced to 6% in
comparison with a 33% sensitivity fluctuation across the
8-inch wafer reported in our early work fabricated by a DRIE
process. After front-side vacuum sealing, temperature-
induced performance degradation has also been minimized.
Moreover, the dramatic geometry downsizing (device
footprint ∼385 µm2 ) validates the scalability of the
SiNW-based NEMS sensor. With excellent uniformity,
the SiNW-based sensor can be commercially manufactured
on an 8-inch wafer at lower cost with high yield.
Index Terms — Absolute pressure sensor, piezoresis-
tance, silicon nanowire (SiNW), surface micromachining,
nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS).
I. I NTRODUCTION
P IEZORESISTIVE pressure sensor with doped silicon
material has been introduced decades ago [3]. It has
been widely implemented [4] and demonstrates a relatively
good linearity as well as a great stability over other pressure
transducers using different sensing mechanisms (e.g., capac-
itive [5] and piezoelectric [6]). In most differential pressure-
sensing schemes, the pressure can be applied from either the
front or back side of the sensing structure, which can be
realized through either wet (e.g., KOH etching) or dry etching
(e.g., DRIE) process [4], [7]. In the case of wet etching release,
the backside opening window is normally much larger than
the effective sensing area on the front side due to the etching
Manuscript received December 20, 2016; revised January 6, 2017,
January 26, 2017, February 13, 2017, March 1, 2017, and
March 7, 2017; accepted March 8, 2017. Date of publication
March 15, 2017; date of current version April 24, 2017. The review
of this letter was arranged by Editor S. Pourkamali. (Corresponding
author: Yuandong Gu.)
The authors are with the Institute of Microelectronics, Agency
for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore 117685 (e-mail:
elezss79@gmail.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LED.2017.2682500
0741-3106 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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653
stop angle along the <111> crystalline direction. Such larger
opening defines the minimum pitch between adjacent devices
and thus limits the device population per piece of wafer and,
as a consequence, indicates higher manufacturing cost. On the
other hand, the dry etching process tackles the pitch problem
and increases the device density on the wafer, but severe
sensing non-uniformity across the wafer has been reported [2]
and has not yet been eliminated due to the limitation of the
process itself.
An alternative to differential pressure sensing, the absolute
pressure-sensing scheme has always been in high demand in
many applications requiring a steady and good-quality vacuum
as the reference pressure [8], [9]. To create the vacuum cavity,
an extra bonding substrate is usually needed, and different
bonding processes (e.g., anodic or eutectic bonding [9], [10])
have to be implemented to form the cavity. Except for
the challenge of ensuring low vacuum pressure, fabrication
costs and complications of the bonding process are also the
subsequent challenges. To address both uniformity issue and
fabrication difficulties, X. Li et al. recently demonstrated an
absolute pressure sensor utilizing a surface micromachining
process [11]. The sensing diaphragm is released via holes on
the front side of the device using TMAH (or KOH) [12]. The
device made from this process is low cost and has a uniform
sensing output. Nevertheless, the piezoresistance effect of
the poly-silicon material impedes the device performance in
terms of sensitivity as well as further shrinkage of the sensor
footprint.
With the progress of NEMS technology, the doped single-
crystal silicon nanowire (SiNW) has shown its superior per-
formance (e.g., better scalability and sensitivity) than the
conventional poly-silicon wires or metal gauges [13]–[16].
In this letter, we will elaborate the design, fabrication, and
performance of SiNW-based absolute pressure sensor through
a complete set of experimental results. With advantages of
surface micromachining, not only has the temperature per-
formance of the device been enhanced, but a better sensing
uniformity has also been observed across the whole 8-inch
wafer. Additionally, the reported absolute pressure sensor can
be manufactured in large volume at low cost.
II. D ESIGN AND FABRICATION
The schematic drawing of the SiNW-based absolute pressure
sensor and its construction are illustrated in Fig. 1(a) and (b).
Unlike other reported shapes of membranes fabricated using
 654
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic drawing of the SiNWs absolute pressure sensor
with an inset of SiNWs; (b) cross-section of the vacuum cavity and
trench; (c) SEM of the final NEMS sensor; (d) TEM image showing the
cross-section of a single nanowire; (e) SEM image of the release hole
after deposition of sealing layers.
Fig. 2. The illustration of process flow ((a)–(i) in sequence) for the
fabrication of SiNWs-based NEMS absolute pressure sensor.
surface micromachining [12], [17], the square diaphragm with
a size of 150 μm2 is chosen to maximize the total effective
sensing area. Assuming equivalent piezoresistance effects in
both longitudinal and transverse directions, four identical pairs
of SiNWs are symmetrically designed at the center of each
diaphragm edge and configured in a full Wheatstone bridge
structure for maximum output. The electrical connection for
the measurement has also been indicated in Fig. 1(a). Details
of the fabrication are described as follows.
The fabrication started with a (100) SOI wafer with a device
Si layer of 117 nm and a buried oxide layer of 145 nm.
A global P-type implantation (Fig. 2(a)) was performed with
a lower dosage (1×1014 ion/cm2 ) to ensure an optimum
piezoresistance effect of SiNW, which was defined through the
following reactive ion etching (Fig. 2(b)). By optimizing the
exposure and focus during the lithography, an average cross-
section of about 100 nm2 was achieved (shown in Fig. 1(d)).
To accurately control the size of the sensing diaphragm,
the oxide deep trench (width, ∼1 μm; depth, ∼18 μm) was
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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 38, NO. 5, MAY 2017
pre-defined before the diaphragm release (Fig. 1(c) and (d)).
After aluminum metallization (Fig. 2(e)), XeF2, which had
a high etching selectivity between Si and SiO2 trench, was
applied as an etchant to remove the substrate silicon layer
(Fig. 2(f) and (g)). To maintain the mechanical strength of the
diaphragm with a fast and uniform releasing outcome across
the entire 8-inch wafer, a total area of about 1% of the released
diaphragm was exposed to the etchant, and the full release was
achieved within 50 cycles (roughly 400 seconds), which was
much faster than the backside releasing method using DRIE
(usually in hours).
To achieve a relatively high-vacuum cavity and minimize
outgassing, the metallic material (e.g., aluminum) was first
deposited for release hole sealing. Compared with the chamber
pressure (a few hundreds of millitorr) during dielectric material
(e.g., SiO2 or Si3 N4 ) deposition, the metallic material coating
process would further lower the cavity pressure by an order
and stay in the range of a few tens of millitorr. After the
final deposition of Si3 N4 , the bonding pads were opened
for electrical measurements (Fig. 2(h) and (i)). As shown
in Fig. 1(c), the footprint of a single fabricated pressure sensor
is only 385 μm2 . In the case of fabrication using the 8-inch
wafer, there are 100,000 devices or more that can be populated
on a single wafer, hence creating a significant reduction of the
manufacturing cost.
III. M ODELING AND C HARACTERIZATION
To ensure a linear output reading against pressure change,
a flat sensing diaphragm is crucial. In general, an initial
deformation of less than 10% of the total diaphragm thick-
ness would introduce a mechanical nonlinearity of 0.2%.
If the initial deflection reaches 30%, it would create a
mechanical nonlinearity as large as 2% even before pressure
measurement [18]. With the exception of the residual stress
compensation discussed previously [2], an extra initial defor-
mation caused by the pressure difference between the vacuum
(reference pressure inside the cavity) and in ambience had to
be pre-calculated in the diaphragm design stage. As depicted
in Fig. 1(e), the compressive stress (about -200 MPa) gen-
erated from a 2-μm SiO2 layer will be compensated by a
combination of 0.6-μm aluminum (tensile stress, ∼70 MPa)
and 1-μm Si3 N4 (tensile stress, ∼85 MPa) layers. The rest
of the portion below the SiO2 layer is the residual of back-
sputtering generated during the FIB process. The finite ele-
ment model (Abaqus 6.10) was used to estimate the initial
diaphragm deformation due to ambient pressure. Refer to
our previous work for the detailed parameters applied in the
simulation [2]. Both simulated and measured (using white
light interferometer: WYKO NT3300) diaphragm profiles are
presented in Fig. 3. They are a good match, and the initial
deformation is only around 4.4% of the total diaphragm
thickness, which implies a minimum mechanical nonlinearity
component during measurement. The rough diaphragm surface
profile is affected by the uneven surface beneath the aluminum
layer due to the hillock effect [19] and the dimples left around
the release hole after cavity sealing.
The absolute pressure-sensing function was character-
ized in a vacuum probe station (CascadeMicrotech, model:
 ZHANG et al .: DEVELOPMENT OF SiNW-BASED NEMS ABSOLUTE PRESSURE SENSOR THROUGH SURFACE MICROMACHINING
Fig. 3. Evaluation of the initial diaphragm deformation with the result
from (a) a white light interferometer; (b) FEM simulation of the initial
deformation; and (c) simulated strain distribution along the longitudinal
direction.
Fig. 4. Device characterization for (a) the output sensitivity and linearity
against pressure changes; (b) zero-point offset drift vs. temperature
increase; (c) dynamic sensitivity variations vs. temperature changes;
and (d) pressure-sensing uniformity across the 8-inch wafer.
PMV200£highest vacuum: 1×10−5 mbar). Using a con-
stant supply voltage of 1 VDC , the differential voltage
from the Wheatstone bridge was measured by a multi-meter
(Agilent 34405A). The sensing behaviors with three different
lengths of SiNWs were recorded under room temperature and
plotted in Fig. 4(a). The device with the shortest nanowire
appeared to have the highest sensitivity due to the higher
strain accumulation closer to the diaphragm edge. According
to the strain profile along the longitudinal direction (the strain
in transverse direction is generally an order lower) as shown
in Fig. 3(c), the estimated gauge factor of the nanowire is
around 70, which is consistent with our previous finding [2].
In addition, the output nonlinearity has been reduced by half
to 0.31% (BFSL) in contrast to our reported differential
pressure sensor with nonlinearity of 0.6% (BSFL) [2]. How-
ever, as one of the major drawbacks for shorter nanowires,
they respond acutely to temperature variations. The per-
formance of the absolute pressure sensor with respect to
temperature changes was recorded in Fig. 4(b) and (c).
For the device with 5-μm-long SiNWs over the full span
within a temperature rise from 25 °C to 125 °C, the tem-
perature coefficient of offset normalized with the full span
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655
at 25 °C (TCO@25 °C) is around 0.075% FS/ °C, whereas
the value increases to 0.115% FS/ °C for the 1.5-μm-long
SiNW-based device. In addition to the zero offset drift, sen-
sitivity and linearity are degraded together with the rising
temperature. Finally, the outputs (recorded at 25 °C) from
five identical devices across the 8-inch wafer were plotted
in Fig. 4(d) to evaluate performance uniformity. Benefiting
from the precise etching stop contributed by surface micro-
machining, the resultant sensing performance variation is
significantly minimized (<6%) compared with the sensitivity
drift (∼33%) across the wafer in our previous report using
bulk micromachining [2].
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this letter, we demonstrate the development step for
the NEMS absolute pressure sensor using P-doped SiNWs as
sensing elements. The nonlinearity component is successfully
reduced by minimizing the initial diaphragm deformation.
In addition to the decent temperature performance, the great
scalability of SiNW-based piezoresistive sensing elements
paves the way for realizing large volume NEMS sensor
manufacturing. With the advantage of surface micromachining,
better device uniformity across the 8-inch wafer is achieved,
and the reported sensor can be implemented as a low-cost
barometer that aligns to market needs (e.g., low cost and high
yield) and motivates the commercialization of NEMS sensors
catered for the consumer electronics industry.
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