Design and simulation of mems based piezoresitive pressure sensor for microfluidic applications

Abstract

This paper presents the design and simulation of MEMS based piezoresistive pressure sensor for microfluidic applications. Geometrical parameters are very much considerable when designing microstructure of the pressure sensor. Hence, an analysis is carried out by changing the dimensional parameters of three different diaphragm geometries namely square shaped diaphragm, circular shaped diaphragm and cross sectional beam shaped diaphragm respectively. This is performed in three dimensional mesh plots using Matlab. The Finite Element Method (FEM) analyses are performed in COMSOL and by comparing the results, the square type diaphragm is chosen as best diaphragm geometry for the microfluidic applications. In addition, modal analysis is carried out by using Ansys to identify the natural frequency of the best diaphragm geometry. Also Piezoresistive sensing elements are designed and simulated by performing coupled field analysis using COMSOL Multiphysics. Simulation results reveal that piezo resistive square type pressure sensors have high sensitivity in a wide range of pressures.