阅读说明：本技术 高灵敏度微压检测倒置台形空腔结构电容式微机械超声换能器 (High-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-table-shaped cavity structure capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer ) 是由 王红亮 丁琦 何常德 张文栋 黄霄 王任鑫 王智豪 于 2021-08-10 设计创作，主要内容包括：本发明涉及微压(0-10kPa)检测领域,尤其涉及MEMS或电容式微机械超声换能器,具体为高灵敏度微压检测倒置台形空腔结构电容式微机械超声换能器,包括金属上电极、Si振膜、SiO-(2)支撑柱、真空腔、SiO-(2)绝缘层以及硅衬底,Si振膜的下方边缘位置设置有环形的SiO-(2)支撑柱,SiO-(2)支撑柱的下方设置硅衬底,Si振膜、SiO-(2)支撑柱和硅衬底所围成的真空腔为倒置的圆台形真空腔,真空腔底部设置有SiO-(2)绝缘层,Si振膜上方溅射金属上电极。本发明的电容式微机械超声换能器具有高灵敏度、优线性度的压力检测性能。(The invention relates to the field of micro-pressure (0-10kPa) detection, in particular to an MEMS or capacitive micro-mechanical ultrasonic transducer, and specifically relates to a high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-platform-shaped cavity capacitive micro-mechanical ultrasonic transducer, which comprises a metal upper electrode, a Si vibrating diaphragm and SiO 2 Support pillar, vacuum cavity and SiO 2 An insulating layer and a silicon substrate, wherein the lower edge of the Si diaphragm is provided with annular SiO 2 Support post, SiO 2 A silicon substrate, a Si diaphragm and SiO are arranged below the supporting column 2 The vacuum cavity enclosed by the support column and the silicon substrate is an inverted round platform-shaped vacuum cavity, and SiO is arranged at the bottom of the vacuum cavity 2 And a metal upper electrode is sputtered above the insulating layer and the Si diaphragm. The capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer has the pressure detection performance of high sensitivity and excellent linearity.)

1. A high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-platform-shaped cavity structure capacitive micro-mechanical ultrasonic transducer comprises a metal upper electrode (1), a Si vibrating diaphragm (2) and SiO₂Support pillar (3), vacuum cavity (4), SiO₂An insulating layer (5) and a silicon substrate (6); the lower edge of the Si diaphragm (2) is provided with annular SiO₂Support column (3), SiO₂The below of support column (3) sets up silicon substrate (6), its characterized in that: si diaphragm (2), SiO₂A vacuum cavity (4) enclosed by the support column (3) and the silicon substrate (6) is an inverted round platform-shaped vacuum cavity, and SiO is arranged at the bottom of the vacuum cavity (4)₂And a metal upper electrode (1) is sputtered above the insulating layer and the Si diaphragm (2).

2. The high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-truncated-cone-shaped cavity structure capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer according to claim 1, wherein: the radius of the Si diaphragm (2) and the radius of the top of the vacuum cavity (4) are 200 microns, the thickness of the Si diaphragm (2) is 5 microns, and SiO is added₂The width of the supporting column (3) is 10 micrometers, and the height of the vacuum cavity (4) is 3 micrometers; the bottom radius of the vacuum cavity (4) is 40-100 microns.

3. The high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-truncated-cone-shaped cavity structure capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer according to claim 2, wherein: the radius of the bottom of the inverted truncated cone-shaped vacuum chamber was 50 μm.

4. The high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-truncated-cone-shaped cavity structure capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that: the silicon substrate (6) is a low-resistivity silicon substrate.

Technical Field

The invention relates to the field of micro-pressure (0-10kPa) detection, in particular to an MEMS or capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer, and specifically relates to a high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-platform-shaped cavity capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer.

Background

The pressure is the most basic application parameter, and the precision measurement of the pressure is a technical problem which needs to be solved urgently in the fields of industrial production, scientific research, national defense science and technology, biomedical treatment and the like. Particularly, in a micro-pressure environment, efficiently and accurately acquiring weak pressure is always one of the key technologies and difficulties in pressure sensor design; in addition to the complex conditions of sudden pressure change and the like, the difficulty in designing a practical sensor with high sensitivity and low detection is quite high. Nevertheless, the micro-pressure sensor is always a research hotspot of researchers, which mainly lies in that micro-pressure measurement has urgent application requirements in the fields of aerospace, industrial control and the like. For example: the method comprises the steps of carrying out height measurement and track correction of an aircraft through high altitude pressure, monitoring the pressure condition in the chemical reaction process in industrial production, detecting the pulsation air pressure of foreign objects in a high-speed rail running system, detecting the pressure difference before and after the carotid artery blood vessel operation and the like.

After a long time of development, sensors for pressure measurement are continuously developed and put into use, and more prominently, pressure sensors based on MEMS technology. Compared with other types of pressure sensors, the sensor has the remarkable advantages of miniaturization, high resonance frequency, high sensitivity, low noise, mass production and the like. MEMS pressure sensors can be broadly divided into: piezoresistive, capacitive and resonant types. The piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensor is prepared by utilizing the piezoresistive effect of materials. The sensor has simple process and good linearity, but the inherent temperature-sensitive characteristic has great influence on the measurement precision, and the necessary temperature compensation seriously limits the application range of the sensor. The capacitance MEMS pressure sensor indirectly obtains the pressure to be measured through the capacitance change between the upper and lower polar plates. The sensor has the advantages of low temperature drift, low power consumption, high sensitivity and the like, but the inherent nonlinear characteristic and small output capacitance have high requirements on detection signals. And the resonant MEMS pressure sensor indirectly realizes pressure measurement through the natural frequency change of the resonator during working. Compared with the former two, the resonant MEMS pressure sensor is mainly affected by mechanical characteristics of the device itself structural design, so that the measurement accuracy/sensitivity is high, the anti-interference performance is strong, and the sensor performance requirements in aerospace, industrial control and other fields are high, wherein the typical representative is a silicon micro-resonant MEMS pressure sensor.

As a representative of the silicon micro-resonance type MEMS sensor, a Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT) has become an important component of the silicon micro-resonance type MEMS pressure sensor due to its excellent resonance characteristics. When the CMUT is designed as a pressure sensor, it can be used to measure static or slowly varying pressure. Different from a resonant pressure sensor with a second sensitive element such as a cantilever beam, the diaphragm of the CMUT can directly sense different pressures, so that the resolution is effectively improved; in addition, the CMUT itself has higher resonant frequency, quality factor and the like, and conditions are created for improving the pressure measurement sensitivity; furthermore, the robust structure of the CMUT, the good circuit matching, and the mass producibility have significant advantages in ensuring the reliability of pressure measurement in a complex environment.

At present, the structure of a typical Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT) is shown in fig. 1, and comprises a metal upper electrode, a Si diaphragm, and SiO₂Support pillar, vacuum cavity and SiO₂An insulating layer and a silicon substrate (also a lower electrode), wherein the lower edge of the Si diaphragm is provided with annular SiO₂Support post, SiO₂A silicon substrate, a Si diaphragm and SiO are arranged below the supporting column₂The cavity enclosed by the support column and the silicon substrate is a vacuum cavity, and SiO is arranged at the bottom of the vacuum cavity₂And a metal upper electrode is sputtered above the insulating layer and the Si diaphragm, and the silicon substrate is a heavily doped silicon substrate. The traditional Si diaphragm of the capacitive micro-mechanical ultrasonic transducer is a flat diaphragm, and the diaphragm and the cylindrical cavity structure seriously limit the deformation of the diaphragm and inhibit the further optimization of the pressure measurement performance.

Disclosure of Invention

Common capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers for micro-pressure (0-10kPa) measurement are limited by the cavity structure, and the pressure measurement sensitivity and linearity are low. In view of the above problem, an object of the present invention is to provide a CMUT micro-cell having an inverted truncated cone-shaped cavity structure for micro-pressure detection, so as to achieve high sensitivity and excellent linearity of pressure detection performance.

The invention is realized by adopting the following technical scheme: a high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection capacitance type micro-mechanical ultrasonic transducer with an inverted truncated cone-shaped cavity structure comprises a metal upper electrode, a Si vibrating diaphragm and SiO₂Support pillar, vacuum cavity and SiO₂An insulating layer and a low-resistivity silicon substrate, wherein the lower edge of the Si diaphragm is provided with annular SiO₂Support post, SiO₂A silicon substrate, a Si diaphragm and SiO serving as a lower electrode are arranged below the supporting column₂The cavity enclosed by the support column and the silicon substrate is an inverted round platform-shaped vacuum cavity, and SiO is arranged at the bottom of the vacuum cavity₂And an upper electrode is sputtered on the insulating layer and the Si diaphragm.

The basic working principle of the invention is as follows: the CMUT has its two end electrodes applied with certain bias voltage and placed in micro-pressure environment, the common action of electrostatic force and external pressure causes the displacement state of the diaphragm to change obviously, and further causes the resonant frequency of the CMUT to change, and the measured pressure value can be obtained through the corresponding relation between the pressure change and the frequency change.

According to the invention, on the basis of the traditional CMUT, the radius of the bottom of the cavity is reduced to form an inverted truncated cone-shaped cavity structure, so that the average height of the closed cavity is reduced. The inverted truncated cone shaped cavity structure means that the radius of the bottom of the cavity is smaller than that of the top. According to the prior art, if a certain direct current bias voltage is applied, when the average height of the closed cavity is reduced, the electrostatic force borne by the vibrating diaphragm is increased, and the generated displacement is correspondingly increased; furthermore, the decreasing radius of the bottom of the cavity decreases the average height of the cavity, which in turn leads to a decrease in the collapse voltage of the CMUT. The displacement increase and the collapse voltage decrease are beneficial to improving the measurement performance of the pressure sensor.

Further, the Si diaphragm halfThe radius of the diameter and the top of the vacuum cavity are 200 microns, the thickness of the Si diaphragm is 5 microns, and SiO is added₂The width of the support column is 10 micrometers, and the height of the vacuum cavity is 3 micrometers; the radius of the bottom of the vacuum chamber is 40-100 microns, preferably 50 microns.

The CMUT cells have the best overall performance at a radius of the vacuum chamber bottom of 50 μm, considering the resonance frequency and measurement sensitivity of the CMUT cells.

Compared with the prior art, the invention has the advantages that:

(1) compared with the traditional CMUT micro-element, the average height of the cavity of the structure is reduced, and under the condition of ensuring that the bias voltage and the external pressure are unchanged, the electrostatic force is increased, so that more obvious displacement change can be realized (as shown in figure 5).

(2) Compared with the traditional CMUT micro-element, the structure has the advantages that the small change of the external pressure correspondingly generates more obvious displacement and response change of the resonant frequency, so that higher-sensitivity pressure detection can be realized (as shown in figures 5 and 6).

(3) Compared with the traditional CMUT micro-element, the linearity between the resonance frequency change and the pressure change is obviously improved, and the accuracy of the CMUT micro-element for measuring the pressure can be effectively ensured (as shown in figure 7).

(4) Compared with the conventional CMUT microcell, the collapse voltage value is greatly reduced, so that the bias voltage value is closer to the collapse voltage value, and the sensitivity of pressure measurement can be effectively improved (as shown in fig. 8).

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a structural view of a conventional CMUT.

Fig. 2 is a diagram of the CMUT cell structure of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a graph showing the relationship between sensitivity and radius of the cavity bottom.

Figure 4 is a schematic diagram of the frequency of the CMUT of the present invention in relation to the radius of the cavity floor, wherein the solid line is the frequency of the conventional CMUT, which is a fixed value.

FIG. 5 is a graph comparing the displacement of two structures.

FIG. 6 is a graph comparing sensitivity of two structures.

Figure 7 is a graph comparing the linearity of two structures.

FIG. 8 is a graph comparing collapse voltage for two structures.

In the figure: 1-metal upper electrode, 2-Si vibrating diaphragm and 3-SiO₂Support column, 4-vacuum chamber, 5-SiO₂Insulating layer, 6-silicon substrate, 7-annular trench.

Detailed Description

As shown in FIG. 2, the high-sensitivity micro-pressure detection inverted-mesa-shaped cavity structure capacitive micro-mechanical ultrasonic transducer of the present invention has an overall structure comprising a metal upper electrode 1, a Si diaphragm 2, and SiO₂Support pillar 3, vacuum chamber 4, SiO₂An insulating layer 5 and a low resistivity silicon substrate (as a lower electrode); the specific preparation process flow comprises the following steps: firstly, removing surface insoluble pollutants from prepared SOI wafers and high-quality Si wafers after RCA cleaning; then, defining the shape and the depth of the mesa cavity on the high-quality Si wafer by adopting photoetching and wet etching processes, and then forming a silicon dioxide insulating layer by dry oxygen oxidation; secondly, after bonding the SOI and the processed Si wafer, removing an oxygen buried layer and a substrate of the SOI by adopting a dry etching process and a wet etching process, thereby releasing top silicon to form a vibrating diaphragm; and finally, defining the metal upper electrode by adopting photoetching and magnetron sputtering processes.

The invention is further described below with reference to material properties.

The conventional CMUT geometric parameters are as follows: radius r of diaphragm_m200 microns, a diaphragm thickness h of 5 microns, SiO₂The support posts typically have a width of 10 μm and a cavity height d₀Is 3 microns.

The properties of CMUTs are closely related to structure, material, load, etc., and they can affect the measurement performance of the pressure sensor by indirectly changing the diaphragm displacement. When the electrostatic force and the uniform pressure act together, the displacement at the radial position r of the diaphragm is:

in the formula r_mIs the diaphragm radius, D is the effective bending stiffness, and P is the pressure to be measured;

when the initial deflection is zero, the electrostatic force Q per unit area is:

Q＝ε₀V_dc ²/(2d₀ ²) (2)

in the formula of₀Relative dielectric constant of vacuum, V_dcIs a bias voltage;

V_collapsefor collapse voltage, A is the upper electrode area and K is the equivalent spring coefficient of the diaphragm.

The above equations (1), (2) and (3) are prior art techniques for analyzing and calculating various parameters of the CMUT, such as displacement at the radial position r of the diaphragm, electrostatic force Q per unit area, and collapse voltage. It can be seen from the above formula that if a DC bias voltage V is applied_dcDefinitely, according to the formulas (1) and (2), the average height of the cavity is reduced, the electrostatic force borne by the vibrating diaphragm is increased, and the generated displacement is correspondingly increased; furthermore, according to equation (3), the reduction of the cavity height also leads to a reduction of the collapse voltage of the CMUT. This will contribute to improving the measurement performance of the pressure sensor.

According to the invention, on the basis of the traditional CMUT, the radius of the bottom of the cavity is reduced to 50 μm to form an optimal inverted truncated cone-shaped cavity structure, so that the average height of the closed cavity is effectively reduced.

As can be seen from FIG. 3, the pressure sensitivity decreases rapidly with increasing radius at the bottom of the cavity, and as the radius continues to increase to half the diaphragm radius, the pressure measurement sensitivity stabilizes substantially at 93.4Hz kPa^-1。

As can be seen from fig. 4, when the pressure P to be measured is 0, the radius of the bottom of the cavity is larger, and compared with the conventional CMUT, the decrease of the resonance frequency of the CMUT of the present invention is smaller, that is, in the range of 0-100 μm, the resonance frequency is continuously increased along with the increase of the radius of the bottom of the cavity; the frequency remains substantially constant when the radius of the bottom of the cavity exceeds 100 μm. Therefore, the radius of the bottom of the truncated cone-shaped cavity is not too large or too small, the pressure sensitivity is greatly reduced due to the too large radius of the bottom of the cavity, and the resonance frequency of the diaphragm is sharply reduced due to the too small radius of the bottom of the cavity.

As can be seen from fig. 5, the CMUT micro-cells according to the present invention have more significant displacement change under external pressure, especially more significant displacement change near the center of the cavity.

As shown in fig. 6, the CMUT micro-cell of the present invention has higher sensitivity than the conventional CMUT micro-cell; in fig. 7, the CMUT cells according to the present invention have higher linearity than the conventional CMUT cells. As shown in fig. 8, the collapse voltage value of the CMUT micro cell according to the present invention is greatly reduced compared to the conventional CMUT micro cell.

In combination with the above simulation structure, the radius of the bottom cavity is preferably 50 microns, and the CMUT micro-element comprehensive (sensitivity, resonance frequency, etc.) performance is best.