Electromechanical Transduction in a Thin-film Stack
- Detailed Technology Description
- A method for making mechanical transducers using standard CMOS processing techniques has been developed.
- Others
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Patent: 8,174,352
- *Abstract
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A method for making mechanical transducers using standard CMOS processing techniques has been developed. Novel micromechanical and nanomechanical resonating structures have been fabricated at Cornell using a thin-film stack that mimics the film stack found in nearly all electronics foundry processes. Highly flexible, this method used can be implemented in any film stack possessing at least two conductive layers separated by at least one layer with a stress-dependent resistance. For example, a prototype device has been fabricated using highly doped polysilicon and thermally grown silicon dioxide.
The key feature of the film stack that enables transduction are the intermediate layers in the film stack which are grown, deposited, manufactured, or otherwise treated in such a way as to have a stress-dependent resistance or conductivity. In the prototype device presented herein, the intermediate film is silicon dioxide which is thermally grown upon the preceding film layer of highly doped polysilicon. Initially, the intermediate silicon dioxide layer is highly resistive (essentially infinite), but after treatment the resistance drops to on the order of kilohms and exhibits stress-dependent characteristics. As the resonator structure is driven, the resistance of the intermediate layers is modulated in tandem with the motion, and with suitable dc-bias, the motion is directly converted into detectable voltage.
Potential Applications- MEMS and NEMS wherever mechanical transducers are needed.
Advantages
- Can be manufactured using standard CMOS processing
- CMOS/MEMS integration simple
- *Licensing
- Martin Teschlmt439@cornell.edu(607) 254-4454
- Country/Region
- USA
