Stainless steel diaphragm-based piezoresistive pressure sensor
摘要
This work presents the development, fabrication, and characterization of a piezoresistive MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) pressure sensor designed for compatibility with liquid propellants, offering enhanced sensitivity and reduced error through a software-based compensation technique. This approach enables the easy fabrication of piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensors, significantly reducing development cost, time, and labor without compromising performance characteristics. We demonstrate the design, fabrication, packaging, and characterization of a pressure sensor operating in the 0–6 bar range, exhibiting excellent sensitivity, linearity, and low hysteresis. The MEMS sensor exhibits a sensitivity of 1.573 mV/V/bar, with a stability of 0.1% Full-Scale Output (FSO), repeatability of 0.103% FSO, and combined nonlinearity and hysteresis of 0.35% FSO. This work employs software-based compensation, as opposed to conventional hardware methods, to reduce sensor errors. The software algorithm estimates real-time pressure more accurately across varying operating conditions by mitigating the effects of nonlinearity, hysteresis, and temperature variations. This enhanced measurement approach reduces the overall error in the uncompensated sensor output from 1.48% FSO to 0.15% FSO.