Basic study of Piezoresistivity and

Material for Piezoresistive

Pressure Sensor

Rajat Subhra Karmakar

Student ID:D0127304
 Index
• What Is Sensor?
• Trend In Sensor Technology
• Pressure Sensor
• Piezoresistive Pressure Sensor
• Introduction to Piezoresistivity
• Piezoresistive Material for Pressure Sensor
• Alternative Material for Pressure Sensor
• Introduction to Graphene
• Can Graphene be used in a Piezoresistive Pressure
sensor?
• Introduction to Graphene Oxide
• Can Graphene Oxide be used in a Piezoresistive Pressure
sensor?
• Polymer Materials For Piezoresistive Pressure sensor
• Polymer Composites for Pressure Sensor
 What is Sensor?
• Device that converts a non-electrical physical
or chemical quantity into an electrical signal.
 Trends in sensor technology
• Miniaturization
• Integration (sensor, signal processing and
actuator)
– sensor with signal processing circuits for
linearising sensor output, etc.
– sensor with built-in actuator for automatic
calibration, change of sensitivity etc.
• Sensor arrays
 Pressure sensors
• First microsensors developed and used by
industry.
• Low production costs, high sensitivity and low
hysteresis.
• Commercial products are usually either
capacitive, Piezoelectric or Piezoresistive.
Piezoresistive pressure sensor
• The piezoresitive pressure sensors are the simplest to fabricate and provide
electrical output directly.
• Uses the property Piezoresistivity for sensing operation.
• Piezoresistors integrated in the membrane.
• Pressure deflects the membrane.
• Resistance changes proportional to deflection and thus to pressure.
 Introduction to Piezoresistivity
• Piezoresistivity is the change in the electrical resistance of a material when
a strain is applied.
• The change in the resistance with the elongation was first discovered for
iron in 1856 by Lord Kelvin.

• The electrical resistance (R) of the material depends on its dimension and
resistivity (ρ)
………………………………………(1)

• In this equation Ɩ and A are the length and cross sectional area respectively.

• When a stress or a strain is applied to a material, it will lead to changes in

the resistance because of changing its resistivity or physical dimensions.
• When a semiconductor is strained the distance between its atoms will
change. This will lead to the change in the band gap and the shape of the
valance and conduction band. In continue this change will affect the
mobility and resistance of the material. So the piezoresistivity of
semiconductors is significant.
• The resistivity of semiconductor changes as a function of strain.
• The resistivity of a semiconductor material depends on the mobility of
charge carriers. The formula for the mobility is-

………………………………………(2)

• Where q is the charge per unit charge carrier, is the mean free time
between carrier collision events, and m* the effective mass of a carrier in
the crystal lattice.
• Both the mean free time and the effective mass are related to the average
atomic spacing in a semiconductor lattice, which is subjected to changes
under applied physical strain and deformation.
• The change in resistance is linearly related to the applied strain,

….………(3)

• The proportional constant GF in the above equation is called the gauge

factor of a piezoresistor.
• R is the initial resistance of the strain gauge and ∆R is the change in
resistance.
• The term ∆L/L is, by definition, the applied strain and is denoted as
ε(dimension-less).
• For all elastic materials, there is a relationship between the stress σ(N/m^2)
and the strain ε; that is, they obey Hooke’s law and thus deform linearly
with applied force.
• The constant of proportionality is the elastic modulus or Young’s modulus
of the material and is given by
…………………(4)

For a given material, the higher the value of Young’s modulus, the less it
deforms for a given applied stress (i.e., it is stiffer).
 • We know ………………………………………(5)

• Where ρ is the bulk resistivity of the material (Ωcm), l is the length, and A is the
cross-sectional area (i.e., the product of width w and thickness t).
Hence ………………………………………(6)

Differentiating the equation for resistance gives

………………………………………(7)

and hence
………………………………………(8)

By definition, , so the following equations apply on the assumption

that we are dealing with small changes, and hence :

………………………………………(9)

Where ν is Poisson’s ratio

Therefore, from (8) and (9) we have

………………………………………(10)

Or we can write the above equation like this

………………………………………(11)

The change in resistance is due to both the geometric effects (1 + 2ν) and the fractional
change in resistivity (Δρ/ρ) of the material with strain

So Gauge factor can be written as -

………………………(12)

Usually the piezoresistivity effect is determined by the Gauge factor

 Piezoresistive material for Pressure Sensor
• The first piezoresistive materials that are used vastly are
silicon and germanium or their alloys.
• The reason is their high GF compared to the metallic elements
and easy fabrications.
• It is possible to get a GF up to 175 and 102 from P type silicon
and germanium respectively.
• Problem:
– Their GF is not as high as organometalic materials.
– They are not suitable for chemical harsh and high temperature
environments.
– Organometalic materials are not stable enough to be used in the
micromechanical sensors
 Alternative Material for Pressure Sensor
• Diamond
• Carbon Nanotubes (CNT)
• Graphene
• Graphene Oxide etc…..
 Introduction to Graphene
• Graphene is a flat monolayer of sp2-hybridized
carbon atoms tightly bound together in a two-
dimensional honeycomb lattice.
• It is considered to be the building block of the other
carbon allotropes including fullerenes (zero -
dimensional), carbon nanotube (one-dimensional)
and graphite (three-dimensional).

Schematic structure of
(a) graphene as the building
block of other carbon allotropes
including:
(b) fullerene (0D),
(c) carbon nanotube (1D) and
(d) graphite (3D).
• The carbon-carbon bond length in graphene is approximately
0.142 nm.
• In graphene valence and conduction bands touch at six
points at the corners of the Brillouin zone called Dirac points
of which two sets of points are in-equivalent .
• Charge carriers behave like relativistic particles
•Because of its perfect crystal structure,
the electrons can travel submicrometer
distances without scattering.
•The possibility of fabrication of nano-
dimensions graphene devices which
enables the miniaturization of the
electronic and mechanical devices.
 Can Graphene be used in a
Piezoresistive Pressure sensor?
• Recently few researchers (H. Hosseinzadegan et.al.) concluded
that a very high value of the piezoresistive gauge factor for
graphene has been measured.

• Also Lee et al proved that the elastic modulus and the intrinsic
strength of defect free monolayer graphene sheet were
measured to be 1.0 TPa and 130 GPa, respectively .

• Also few organic materials (eg. octadecylamine) can be used

with Graphene to improve the sensor performance.
 Introduction to Graphene Oxide
• Graphene Oxide consists of a hexagonal carbon network
having both sp2 and sp3 hybridized carbons bearing hydroxyl
and epoxide functional groups on its “basal” plane, whereas
the edges are mostly decorated by carboxyl and carbonyl
groups.
• Advantages of GO:
– The polar oxygen functional groups of GO render it
strongly hydrophilic. This gives GO good
dispersibility in many solvents, particularly in water.
This is important for processing and further
derivatization.
– The chemical composition of GO, which can be
chemically, thermally, or electrochemically
engineered, allows the tunability of its
physicochemical properties.
– By appropriately fine-tuning the oxidation or reduction
parameters with a view to controlling the structural
disorder, GO can be made into an insulating,
semiconducting, or semimetallic material.
– The use of GO-based materials also provides control
over the local microenvironment
 Can Graphene Oxide be used in a
Piezoresistive Pressure sensor?

• Monolayer Graphene Oxide was found to have

a lower effective Young’s modulus
(207.6±23.4 GPa when a thickness of 0.7 nm
is used) as compared to the value reported for
“pristine” graphene.
• Gomez-Navarro et al. reported a Young’s
modulus of 0.25±0.15 TPa for a chemically
reduced monolayer graphene oxide.
• More research required to confirm this factor.
 Polymer Materials For Piezoresistive
Pressure sensor
• Conducting polymers has been widely used in organic
electronics after its discovery made by Shirakawa et al.
– because of their flexibility, low cost process ability, light weight.
– conducting polymer also possesses a unique piezoresistive
property , which can be used for strain sensor application.
• When a polymeric film is compressed, the resistivity
decreases owing to reduced intermolecular distance and
increased orbital overlap, leading to higher rates of electron
transfer between neighboring molecules.
• Preferred among such materials are semiconducting
conjugated polymers such as poly [2-methoxy-5-(2
ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phyenylenevinylene](MEH-PPV ),
poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonic acid
(PEDOT:PSS).
 Polymer Composites for Pressure
Sensor
• Eleastomeric Polymers (PDMS) are widely
used as the Insulating elastic medium and
conductive materials are used as doping
materials.
• When pressure is applied the conduction
occurs through the Conductive materials.
• Conductive materials : Carbon Nanotube,
Graphene Oxide, Metal Nanoparticles etc.
Thank You