POSITIONING AND WIDTH ANALYSIS

OF IDT WITH MICROHEATER FOR

BETTER GAS SENSITIVITY

OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION TO MEMS
MEMS BASED GAS SENSOR
NEED OF MICRO HEATER IN GAS SENSOR
JOULE HEATING
IDT
LITERATURE REVIEW
GAPS IN PRESENT STUDY
OBJECTIVES
REFERENCES


MEMS and Micro Sensor
Micro Sensor: It is a sensor that has at least one physical
dimension at the sub millimeter (micron) level.

MEMS Micro Electro Mechanical System.

MEMS is a device where micro sensor and mechanical
parts along with signal processing circuits are integrated
on a small piece of silicon.

INPUT SENSOR PROCESSOR ACTUATOR


Why MEMS ?

IC Compatible Higher Performance

Miniaturization Smaller
Ruggedness
Lower Power Consumption

Batch Fabrication Low Cost
Applications
Automobiles
Machines
Robotics
Medicine
Aerospace etc.
GAS SENSOR
Gas sensor is a subclass of chemical sensors.
Gas sensor determines which gas is present around
and measures the concentration of gas on its surface.
Gas sensor interacts with a gas to measure its
concentration.
Applications:
Process control industries
Environmental monitoring
Alcohol breath tests
Detection of hazardous gases in environment
Home safety
Chemiresistive semiconducting metal oxides are
widely used as gas sensor because of certain
advantages like, very low cost, high sensitivity, fast
response, simple electronic interface, ease of use,
low maintenance and ability to detect large number
of gases.

Mainly gas sensor are used to detect gases like,
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Nitric oxide (NO), Nitrous
oxide (N2O), Carbon monoxide (CO), Ammonia
(NH3), Methane (CH4), Sulfur dioxide (SO2), Carbon
dioxide (CO2).


NEED OF MICROHEATER
Micro-Heaters have been the subject of great interest
owing to their extensive applications in gas sensors,
humidity sensors and other micro-systems.
A micro-heater has low power consumption and
better temperature uniformity.
As we increase the heating area of micro heater, we
can achieve proper detection of selective gases in
terms of ppm or ppb.



Joule Heating
In micro-heaters the basic principle is base on joule
heating. Joule heating is also known as ohmic
heating and resistive heating.
The electric field equals the negative of gradient of
the potential V. All The generated resistive heat Q is
proportional to the square of the magnitude of the
electric current density J. Also Current density J is
proportional to the electric field E:

Q J
2

Cont
The proportionality constant is the electric resistivity
or the reciprocal of the temperature dependent
electric conductivity . Combining these facts we
have,

= 1/
= (T)
Q = *J
2
= (1/) * E
2
= V
2



IDT
The term interdigited, selected for use throughout this, refers to a digitlike or fingerlike
periodic pattern of parallel in-plane electrodes used to build up the resistance when a gas
is present on the material sample or sensitive coating.

A typical chemical interdigited sensor design is to deposit interdigited electrodes on an
insulating substrate. The electrodes are coated with a thin layer of material that is
sensitive to the concentration of chemicals present in the ambient atmosphere. The most
common outputs of measurement are changes in resistance and capacitance between
electrodes. The sensing mechanism is that when the sensor is exposed to ambient
chemicals, the interaction of the chemicals with the sensitive material coating changes
the materials conductivity , dielectric constant ,and/or the effective thickness of the
sensitive layer. The change in conductivity and effective thickness result in a resistance
change, and the change of dielectric constant and effective thickness of the sensitive layer
changes the capacitance.

Interdigital chemical sensors are inexpensive to manufacture and can be integrated on a
chip consisting of the sensor element and signal processing electronics.

LITERATURE REVIEW
In [1], four different
geometries single
meander, double
meander, fan type and
square geometries are
analyzed.
For same material, same
surface area and same
applied voltage, square
type geometry gives
better temperature
distribution among all.

In [2], it describes the
fabrication and characteristics
of a NO sensor using ZnO thin
film integrated SiC micro
heater based on SiC thin film
of operation in harsh
environments.
By using the Pt added ZnO
thin film was showed higher
sensitivity, lower working
temperature, and faster
adsorption characteristics to
NO gas than the pure ZnO
thin film.

In [3], it gives simulation
results of micro-heaters by using
six different patterns like, Plane
plate with central square hole,
Double spiral, Honey comb, S-
shape, fan shape and meander
type with their Electro thermal
simulated temperature profile.
For the same supply voltage
applied, the uniform
temperature profile and same
power consumption, high
temperature uniformity is
achieved in fan type patterns of
micro-heater
In [4], this paper presents
simulation results of
Polyimide (PI) based micro-
heater operating in the
temperature range of 200-
250C which could be
operated at low voltage. Three
different micro heater
geometries have been
simulated.
The resistive track width and
the gap between the
consecutive tracks are varied
and the area over which
uniform temperature is
obtained.

In [5], the geometric
optimization for the micro-
heater has been performed
on platinum micro-heater.
For applying different
conditions like,
(1) A spiral micro-heater
(2) A spiral heater with a
cavity in the silicon at the
center of micro-heater
(3) A suspended spiral
micro-heater on four
bridges
(4) A spiral micro-heater
with sensing layer of ZnO,
And results are analyzed.

In [6], they present the
fabrication of a carbon
monoxide (CO) micro gas sensor
integrated with an inverting
amplifier circuit and a micro
heater on chip using CMOS
process.
The structure is made up such
that Polysilicon resistor is on to
sensing film (SnO2) and micro-
heater is attached with it.
The inverting amplifier circuit is
utilized to convert the resistance
of the gas sensor into the voltage
output.

In [7], this paper presents design, simulation,
fabrication and experimental characterization of the
platinum micro-heater elements built on alumina
substrate. Micro-heaters are designed for application
where the device has to be heated up to 700 C in less
than a 200 ms.
Choosing the proper combination of electrical,
thermal and mechanical characteristics of thick film
heating resistor, glass layer and substrate are taken and
analyzed.

In [8], presented for the first
time is the design and
fabrication of high
temperature, low power
consumption, and good
thermal uniformity micro-
heaters for environmental gas
sensors.
A Wheatstone-bridge type
resistive Pt heating structure
and a multi-ringed heat
spreading structure was
applied to enhance the
thermal uniformity.
Figure:
[9] This paper describes the
structural design and electrothermal
analysis of a microheater array to find
out the thermal characteristic with
different bias voltage.
The array consists of four unit cell,
each of 3mm x 3mm of dimension
with a membrane size of 1.5mm x 1.5
mm.
This device has the unique
advantage of making the microheater
and interdigitated electrode co-
planner using a single lithography
process.
GAPS IN PRESENT STUDY
Micro-heater geometries generally used for proper detection of
gases on MEMS based gas sensor, there is more preference given
to high temperature. But oxidation and reduction processes
occur in MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) based gas sensor
around 380K to 600K. And some micro-heater materials do not
support high temperature as high temperature changes its
parameters.
Although at less temperature some sensing material like, WO
3
(Tungsten trioxide), SnO
2
(Stannic oxide), ZnO (Zinc Oxide) are
widely used and give very good gas concentration value on
surface.
There are different geometries analyzed and compared to one
another. But very less work is done regarding the positioning and
width analysis of IDT in a coplanar micro-heater design.

OBJECTIVES
To simulate co-planar micro-heater geometries and to
make analysis which geometry is better.
To simulate a fixed geometry by varying IDT position
and dimensions to improve the sensitivity for gas
detection.
To achieve a geometry optimization in fixed surface
area for given structure for temperature uniformity.
References
[1] L. Sujatha, V. S. Selvakumar, S. Aravind, R. Padamapriya, B. Preethi, Design and
Analysis of Micro-Heaters using COMSOL Multiphysics for MEMS Based Gas Sensor,
Proceedings COMSOL Conference, India, 2012.
[2] Jae-Cheol Shim, Gwiy-Sang Chung, Fabrication and Characteristics of Pt/ZnO NO
Sensor Integrated SiC Micro Heater, IEEE SENSORS Conference, India, 2010.
[3] Velmathi G., Ramshanker N., Mohan S., 2D Simulations and Electro-Thermal Analysis
of Micro-Heater Designs Using COMSOLTM for Gas Sensor Applications COMSOL
Conference, India, 2010.
[4] M. Gayake, D. Bokdas, S. Gangal, Simulations of Polymer based Microheater Operated
at Low Voltage, COMSOL Conference, India, 2011.
[5] Vineet Bansal , Anil Gurjar, Dinesh Kumar, B. Prasad, 3-D Design, Electro-Thermal
Simulation and Geometrical Optimization of spiral Platinum Micro-heaters for Low Power
Gas sensing applications using COMSOL
TM
, COMSOL Conference, India, 2011.
[6] Ching-Liang Dai, Mao-Chen Liu, Nano particle SnO2 Gas Sensor with Circuit and
Micro Heater on Chip Fabricated Using CMOS-MEMS Technique, IEEE International
Conference on Nano/Micro Engineered and Molecular Systems pp. 16 - 19, Bangkok,
Thailand, 2007.
[7] Sasa Toskov, Ronald Glatz, Goran Miskovic, Goran Radosavljevic, Modeling and
Fabrication of Pt MicroHeaters Built on Alumina Substrate, 36
th
Int. Spring Seminar on
Electronics Technology, 2013.
[8] H. Y. Lee, S. Moon, S. J. Park, J. Lee, K.-H. Park, J. Kim, Micro- Machined resistive
micro-heaters for high temperature gas sensing applications, Electronics Lett. Vol. 44 No.
25, 2008.
[9] S.S.Mondal, S.Roy, C.K.Sarkar, Design and Electrothermal analysis of MEMS based
Microheater Array for Gas Sensor using INVAR alloy, International Conference on
Communications, Devices and Intelligent Systems (CODIS), 2012.







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