Sensors and Actuators A 123–124 (2005) 30–35

Flexible wireless pressure sensor module

Kyu-Ho Shina,∗ , Chang-Ryoul Moona , Tae-Hee Leeb ,
Chang-Hyun Limb , Yong-Jun Kimb
a Nano Fabrication Center, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Suwon 440-600, Republic of Korea
b Microsystem Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, 134 Shinchon-dong, Sodaemoon-gu,
Seoul 120-749, Republic of Korea

Received 1 September 2004; received in revised form 16 December 2004; accepted 9 January 2005
Available online 8 February 2005

Abstract

A flexible wireless pressure sensor module for implantable blood pressure sensing has been developed using chip embedded flexible
packaging (CEFP) technology. The CEFP can provide wireless communication platform, which is composed of thinned silicon chips (RFIC)
and antenna. The mechanical characteristics of the thinned silicon chips for flexible communication platform are analyzed using a bending
test and computer simulation. The realized sensor is mechanically flexible and can be easily attached to the outside of the blood vessel. The
pressure sensor consists of a flexible capacitance type sensor system including LC resonator, which is wrapped onto the blood vessel and can
remotely monitor the blood pressure. As blood pressure changes, the blood vessel either expands or shrinks. The sensor system recognizes
blood pressure variation due to changing the distance between the electrodes and hence, capacitance. While the applied pressure changes
from 0 to 213.3 kPa the resonator frequency changes correspondingly. The sensitivity of the implantable blood pressure is 11.25 kHz/kPa.
The proposed flexible wireless sensor module can be used as a basic platform in a ubiquitous sensor network system.
© 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Chip embedded flexible packaging; Implantable blood pressure sensor; Real-time monitoring

1. Introduction are abnormalities in the control of contraction and expansion

The trend of minimizing the system size and integra-
tion of various functions into a single device continues to
grow. To achieve smaller, faster and more reliable devices,
we introduce the CEFP (chip embedded flexible packaging)
technology. The CEFP is a system integration of a flexible
active device and passive component on a flexible substrate,
which is shown in Fig. 1. The CEFP technology can provide
a flexible wireless sensor network platform for many applica-
tions through substitution of the number of different sensors.
For instance, we present the implantable flexible wireless
pressure sensor for circulatory patients. The major cause of
sudden death of adults is a disease of the artery like angina
pectoris and myocardial infarction. Causes of such diseases
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 31 200 3216; fax: +82 31 200 3785.
E-mail address: kyuhos@samsung.com (K.-H. Shin).
of blood vessels and vessel occlusion by plaque. According
to the medical science reports [1], blood vessel disease like
blood vessel shrinking or blocking are increased in last few
decades. Therefore, if continuous blood pressure monitoring
using telemetry is possible, the diagnosis and treatment for
cardiovascular diseases can be realized. There have been a lot
of methods to prevent cardiovascular disease. First of all, an-
giography and electrocardiogram are widely used. Through
the application of these methods, any problems concerning
blood vessels, such as the accumulation of plaque can be pre-
cisely diagnosed. However, these methods also have disad-
vantages. If the regular health examination is not performed,
the application in daily life is impossible due to its stationary
property. Secondly, catheter or needles are used to place vari-
ous kinds of sensors directly into arteries of patients. Pressure
sensors mounted on the catheter can be used during opera-
tion like balloon angioplasties [2,3]. However, these kinds of

0924-4247/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.sna.2005.01.008
 K.-H. Shin et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 123–124 (2005) 30–35
Fig. 1. Chip embedded flexible packaging scheme: thinned chips in multi-
layer board. (a) Thinned chips in a flexible substrate. (b) Photograph of
flexible CEFP platform.
sensors can be used during only for the operation, because it
has to be mounted on catheter. Lastly, sensors are implanted
to penetrate into the blood vessel and used to precisely detect
blood pressure [4,5]. Although, in this case, incessant use of
the sensor is feasible, implantation of anything artificial into
the blood vessel can cause negative side effects on life and
the degradation of the performance of the sensor, which can
be affected by the deposition and generation of plaque. In this
work, to meet the demands of biocompatibility, the main parts
of pressure are composed of polyimide and gold. The sensor
device is designed not to prevent the flow of blood and not to
disturb the mechanical variation of the vessel but to minimize
the obstruction, which can cause sudden death. Therefore, if
the real-time monitoring of blood pressure through wireless
communication is achievable, it can be used to diagnose and
treat disease of blood vessel more efficiently.
2. Experiment
2.1. Silicon wafer thinning
The core technology of the CEFP is making flexible sili-
con chips, which has been realized through chemical etching.
Silicon chips are fabricated thinner than 50 ␮m for mechan-
ical flexibility. Normally, it is impossible to anticipate the
mechanical deformation of silicon since it is so rigid and
brittle. But if its thickness is less than 50 ␮m, silicon is no
31
more rigid and brittle, and it overcomes the mechanical defor-
mation in elastic region [6,7]. During the fabrication process,
it is important to protect the front side of the chip that con-
tains circuit part. A method using thermal release tape that
loses adhesion at a specific temperature was used to over-
come these problems [8]. Thinned silicon chip is fabricated
by chemical etching to remove the possibility of surface dam-
age and directly mounted on Kapton® film by thermal com-
pressive bonding. Since the silicon chip is very thin, electrical
interconnection between Kapton® substrate and silicon chip
is accomplished by electroplating. Due to embedded chip in
substrate, high packaging density and implantable feature can
be accomplished by maximum using of packaging area.
2.2. Numerical analyses and bending test of thinned
silicon
Since the proposed package has large deflection compared
to its thickness, we cannot apply the beam deflection theory
[9,10]. Therefore, we carried out the numerical analysis to
get the mechanical characteristics, since it may be stick on
arbitrary curved surface. Although silicon is a well-known
anisotropic material, the total error margin falls into the range
of several percent even when the variation of elastic modulus
according to the direction is not considered. Fig. 2 shows the
graph that shows the maximum stress of flexible packaged
module when the package is pressed on the surface that has
curvature (ρ) of 5–50 mm. At the curved surface with ρ of
10 mm, the Von-Mises stress is 0.6 GPa and it is consider-
ably lower than silicon’s fracture strength (1.2 GPa). From
the results of numerical analysis, it could be estimated that
the suggested package can be loaded to surface that has curva-
ture of less than 10 mm. And this is proved to be true through
the bending test.
The bending test was performed to examine the ac-
tual characteristics of the thinned silicon chip. During the
bending test, the silicon sample is loaded by support tip
Fig. 2. Maximum Von-Mises stress of flexible package module along various
curvatures.
32 K.-H. Shin et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 123–124 (2005) 30–35
Fig. 3. Optical fracture test for maximum mechanical flexibility: (a) thick-
ness = 25 ␮m, ρ = 3.613 mm; (b) thickness = 40 ␮m, ρ = 6.107 mm.
and real-time image of the sample is captured. Maximum
displacement and radius of curvature (ρ) along the x direc-
tion for each thickness is measured from the captured image
(Fig. 3).
Fig. 4 describes the radius of curvature according to vari-
ous thickness. Measured radius of curvature is compared with
simulated value. The graph shows that the measured value of
ρ is larger than the simulated value. The main reason of the
difference is supposed to be the residual stress during silicon
Fig. 4. Radius of curvature based on the measured displacement.
Fig. 5. Schematic illustration of the wireless measurement for the in vitro
test of pressure sensor.
thinning process.
2.3. Pressure sensor module
Fig. 5 represents the scheme of sensing mechanism that is
attached to the outside of the blood vessel. In this research,
polyimide PYRALIN PI 2611 (DuPont) is used as a sub-
strate material. Polyimides are well-known materials from a
wide range of application. It is proved as a non-toxic ma-
terial in biomedicine [11], and it was also used for neural
implants [12]. This fact has been verified previously accord-
ing to ISO10993. Gold as an electrode material of capacitor
also satisfy the biological compatibility. We wrap the poly-
imide based pressure sensor around the blood vessel using
histoacryl glue (B. Braun Melsungen AG) [13]. As blood
vessel expands and shrinks repeatedly according to the blood
pressure, the distance between electrodes is changed. These
capacitance variations can be recognized by blood pressure.
As shown in Fig. 6a, sensor itself does not contain any power
supply, but just integrated by capacitor and inductor to make
LC resonator for wireless communication. External inductor
coil provides the power to the sensor by mutual inductance.
The resonance frequency of the LC circuit formed by the
capacitor and the inductor changes as capacitance changes.
This change is sensed remotely through inductive coupling
method as shown in Eq. (1):


1 1 R2 1 1
f0 = − 2s √ (1)
2π Lc Cs Ls 2π LC
where f0 is the resonance frequency, L the inductance and
C the capacitance of blood vessel. The whole parts of pres-
sure sensors are composed of polyimide and gold to meet
the demands of biocompatibility. Blood and blood vessel are
considered as dielectric materials that play an important role
in this research from the above equation. Especially blood
is the mixture of many materials that can be varied as the
change of concentration of each component. The contribu-
tion of most blood elements to the dielectric constant is as
small as about 1%. Especially at high frequency (>10 MHz)
its contribution and variation becomes less effective [14,15].
Therefore, target frequency to monitor blood pressure is de-
 K.-H. Shin et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 123–124 (2005) 30–35 33

Table 1
Design value of inductance
Din (mm) Davg (mm) N ρ L (mH)
1 5.2 6.1 9.25 0.1475 1.092
2 4.8 5.9 11.25 0.1864 1.45
3 4.4 5.7 13.25 0.2281 1.808
4 4 5.5 15.25 0.2727 2.149

modification of the number of turns as shown in Table 1. Fab-

rication starts with sacrificial layer deposition of 5000 Å sil-
icon dioxide. 300 Å Cr layer is an adhesive layer and 5000 Å
Au layer is electrode of capacitor. Polyimide is spin coated
and cured to act as flexible substrate. Al is deposited and pat-
terned to make via hole with 100% O2 reactive ion etching
(RIE) process. After RIE process, copper-electroplating pro-
cess is performed to fill via hole and make inductor coil on
the polyimide substrate. And then, polyimide is coated one
more time to prevent direct contact between copper induc-
tor and organs. Finally, sacrificial layer is removed to get the
devices from 25% diluted HF. But it can be replaced by reel-
to-reel process for mass production that does not require the
sacrificial layers.

2.4. Measurement
Fig. 6. Flexible blood pressure module: (a) scheme of integrated blood pres-
sure sensor attached around blood vessel; (b) photograph of sensor device Fig. 7 represents the measured S21 parameter as a func-
and its attaching view around silicone rubber tubing. tion of frequency. As the pressure increases, the graph tends
to shift to the right direction. Fig. 8 shows the measured res-
cided as above several tens of megahertz. Actually coronary onant frequency of pressure sensor as a function of pressure.
artery’s diameter is about 2–3 mm. Therefore, electrodes of If there is no applied pressure, the resonant frequency is de-
capacitor have curved shape. As a result of Maxwell 3D simu- tected at 150.9 MHz. The designed and measured values have
lator, we can optimize the electrode area as 8 mm × 3.14 mm, about 10% differences. The main factor of this difference can
which depends on the outer diameter of vessel. To integrate be recognized as errors from fabrication processes. Sensor
the inductor coil into the sensor system, planar spiral induc- undergoes, as shown in Fig. 8, that frequency of 2.4 MHz
tor is used. Using modified Wheeler Formula as shown in Eq. is varied while the applied pressure is changed 213.3 kPa.
(2), inductance can be calculated to design the LC resonator Therefore, the sensitivity of implantable blood pressure sen-
[16]: sor is 11.25 kHz/kPa.
n2 davg
L = k1 µ0 (2)
1 + k2 ρ
where fill ratio of inductor is given by
dout − din
ρ= (3)
dout + din
and average diameter of inductor is
dout − din
davg = (4)
2
where µ0 is the permeability of free space; n the number of
turns, dout the outer diameter of inductor, din the inner diame-
ter of inductor, the coefficients k1 and k2 are layout dependent
and in case of square inductor, k1 and k2 are 2.34 and 2.75,
respectively. We fix the outer diameter, line spacing and line
width for design convenience. But the inner diameter is af-
fected by the number of turns. Inductance is designed by the Fig. 7. Measured S21 parameter as a function of frequency.
34 K.-H. Shin et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 123–124 (2005) 30–35
Fig. 8. Measured resonant frequency as function of blood pressure.
3. Conclusion
The implantable flexible pressure sensor for telemetric
real-time blood pressure monitoring is designed and fabri-
cated by the CEFP technology for the diagnosis and treatment
of cardiovascular diseases. For the real-time wireless mon-
itoring of blood pressure the flexible sensor was used. The
pressure sensor consists of a flexible capacitance type sensor
system including LC resonator, which is composed of an in-
ductor and capacitor. The power and signal transmission is
successfully accomplished despite the absence of the power
source at the integrated LC resonator. The blood pressure
can be detected as a response from the resonance frequency
shift that was proved by in vitro experiments and at the same
time, fabricated flexible pressure sensor shows proper techni-
cal characteristics. This study confirmed that proposed CEFP
technology can be applied for flexible packaging and meets
requirements of modern trends in ubiquitous sensor network
system.
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by the Ministry of Informa-
tion and Communication (MIC), Korea, under the Informa-
tion Technology Research Center (ITRC) support program
supervised by the Institute of Information Technology As-
sessment (IITA).
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Biographies
Kyu-Ho Shin received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineer-
ing from Ajou University, Suwon, Korea, in 1988 and 1990, respectively.
From 1990 to 1995, he worked at Kwangmyung Electronics Co. as a
project manager of high voltage switchgear team. From 1996 to 2000,
he worked at Samsung Electronics Co., Korea, as a senior engineer in
MEMS packaging field. In 2001, he joined Samsung Advanced Institute
of Technology where he was engaged in development of mainly micro
packaging process for system in packaging and wireless sensor network.
At the same time, from 2001, he belongs to Microsystem Laboratory at
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, as a Ph.D.
student.
Chang-Ryoul Moon received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineer-
ing from Seoul National University in 1983 and the M.S. degree in
 K.-H. Shin et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 123–124 (2005) 30–35
mechanical engineering from KAIST, in 1986. From 1983 he worked
at Samsung Electronics Co., Korea, as a project manager of inkjet printer
head and MEMS related packaging technology. In 2000, he joined Sam-
sung Advanced Institute of Technology in Korea, where he is currently
a technical leader of micro system packaging field.
Tae-Hee Lee received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineer-
ing from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
In 2004 he joined Hyundai Motor Company & Kia Motors Corporation
as a research engineer. His research interests are micro system packaging
using wafer thinning and interconnection process
Chang-Hyun Lim received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical
engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2002 and 2004,
respectively. In 2004 he joined Samsung Electro Mechanical Co., Ltd. as a
35
research engineer. His research interests are micro sensors for vital signal
monitoring system and fabrication processes for electronic packaging.
Yong-Jun Kim received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from
Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1987, and the M.S. degree in electri-
cal and computer engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia,
in 1989. In 1997, he received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and com-
puter engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA,
where his research concerned applications of polymer/metal multilay-
ers to MEMS. From 1996 to 2000, he worked at Samsung Electronics
Co., Korea, as a senior engineer and a project leader, conducting MEMS-
related research projects including micro-fluidic and RF devices. In 2000,
he joined the faculty of the School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei
University, Seoul, Korea, where he is currently an assistant professor. His
research interests are micro sensors and actuators, fabrication processes
for electronic packaging, and integrated passives for RF applications.