Theoretical Analysis and Performance Measurement of MEMS Based Pressure Sensor

A humungous technology advancements in the field of pressure sensors starting from metal diaphragm sensors with bonded silicon strain gauges moving to present developments of surface-micro machined, resonant, optical pressure sensors. An Optical Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MOEMS) pressure sensor with a Mesa membrane having the operating principle of Fabry-Perot (F-P) interference is analyzed in this paper. The idea is to couple light into the sensor (mesa structure diaphragm) through a fiber, which is used to measure pressure by detecting changes of the optical path length or reflectance. The most important criteria in this paper is to compare different mesa structures, say circular and hexagonal .The aim of the paper is to find which structure has a better pressure measurement range and sensitivity. We analyzed the pressure distribution for different structures using ANSYS simulation software and also examined the best application for the specified shapes. Experimental results demonstrate that the circular mesa structure pressure sensor has reasonable linearity, sensitivity, and a wide pressure measurement range.