MEMS2
MEMS2
MEMS2
• Energy of a capacitor,
• Deflection at pull-in,
• Voltage at which pull-in occurs,
• signal to noise ratio (SNR) is a metric of the relative amount of signal and
noise present in a sensor output.
Noise Sources
• Noise in a sensor can arise from a number of mechanical and
electrical effects.
• Shot noise is associated with direct current flow across potential
barriers present in devices such as p–n diodes and bipolar
transistors.
• The passage of each current carrier (electrons or holes) across the
p–n junction in diodes and transistors is a random event dependent
upon the carrier having sufficient energy.
• The continuous external current is actually a large number of discrete
pulses.
• The time constant associated with the passage of carriers across the
potential barrier is extremely small; therefore, the PSD of the shot
noise current can be modeled as white,
• Burst or popcorn noise, is sometimes found in integrated circuits
and discrete transistors.
• The mechanism is not fully understood, but is believed to be related
• Flicker noise is a low-frequency noise component arising from the
capture and release of charge carriers by trap sites produced by crystal
defects or contamination in semiconductors.
• The trap sites capture and release carriers randomly with time constants
that are primarily low frequency.
• The flicker noise current PSD shows a 1/f dependency in amplitude vs.
frequency; and hence called 1/f noise.
• Thermal noise is generated in electrical and mechanical components;
• it arises from the random motion of electrons and atoms, which is
directly proportional to the absolute temperature, T.
• Thermal noise is generated in these systems through their energy
dissipation mechanisms (i.e., resistance for electrical or damping for
mechanical).
• Thermal noise is also known as Johnson noise in electrical systems and
Brownian noise in mechanical systems.
• The PSD for thermal noise is white.
• This is the most fundamental noise limitation for a sensor.
MEMS PHYSICAL SENSORS
1. Accelerometer
• Accelerometers are one of the most frequently utilized physical sensors for
detecting and measuring motion.
• Accelerometers have found applications ranging from measurement and
control to inertial navigation.
• MEMS accelerometers have a large commercial market in automotive
airbag deployment
• The basic components of an accelerometer:
• Inertial mass
• Suspension
• Sensing element
• The suspension supporting the inertial mass will deflect under acceleration
• A sensing element will transduce the deflection of the suspension to an
electrical signal.
• The transduction can be accomplished by a number of means, but the most
common utilize piezoresistive, piezoelectric, or capacitance means.
• Relative displacement of the inertial mass relative
• to the housing, Z = X –Y
• Z is the variable that could be transduced to an
• electrical signal.
• Force balance on the inertial mass including
• spring, K, and damper, C, forces is given by
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• A vibratory gyroscope is composed of a resonator that will
oscillate a body along one axis and measure the orthogonal
movement or force on the body due to Coriolis acceleration.
• The plate is driven along the x axis, the rotation rate to be
measured; Ω is along the z axis and the Coriolis acceleration
response is sensed along the y axis.
• Force balance for the body in the drive (x) and sense (y) axes
• The most important regions are the visible light region and the
NIR region because these are the wavelengths at which signals
are transmitted down fibre-optic cables in modern
telecommunication systems.
1. Pressure driven
2. Electrically driven
Pressure Driven
• Schwesinger designed micromixers for emulsifying immiscible
fluids
• A two-layer microchip mixer in silicon successfully produced
emulsions by successively layering the fluids in microchannels
of a triangular cross-section and typical size of 150 to 200 μm
• This was achieved by splitting and recombining the mixing
channels several times on two levels, so as to proliferate
alternating layers of the different fluids in the channel cross-
section.
• The layering succeeds in reducing the diffusion length by a
factor of 2n if the original stream is split and recombined ‘n’
times.
• The main complexity in the micromanufacturing process, is the
need for alignment of the two chip layers.
• Knight et al. demonstrated very rapid local mixing on a silicon
chip
• They used a single 10 μm–wide mixing channel of unitary
aspect ratio fed by three tributaries in a cross (Ψ) configuration.
• The middle one was shaped as a nozzle terminating in a 5:1
aspect ratio exit, with the intent of further facilitating the rapid
formation of a narrower middle diffusion layer.
• It generated very rapid (O[μs]) local mixing of very small
volumes (O[nL]) at supply pressures as high as 3 atmospheres.
• Bends in channels generate secondary flows at modestly high,
to high Reynolds numbers in the laminar regime.
• This has been employed by several investigators, and mixers
with bends have been used in integrated chips.
• Arrays of modest-aspect-ratio (2) single-level, serpentine
(zigzag) microchannels combined with simple Ψ-junction mixers
were introduced and used by Kamidate et al.
• The potential of attaining improved mixing by placing obstacles
in microchannels has also been explored.
• At very low Reynolds numbers obstacles cannot generate
secondary flows such as recirculations
• It is possible to achieve this at higher Reynolds numbers.
• Swirl chambers have also been employed on the microscale to
achieve effective mixing
• It was a very effective mixing device, but required very high
pressures (15 atmospheres) and a costly manufacturing
process.
Electrically Driven Passive Micromixers
• Application in microfluidic devices that handle biological samples and
perform biological assays.
• He et al. realized a design combining the effects of electroosmotic flow,
convective effects due to bends, and flow-stream splitting and
recombination on a quartz wafer
• Voltages on the order of Kilo Volts were applied to produce velocities of
order 0.3 mm/s
• Yager et al proposed a microscale mixing channel with electrodes (A and B)
at each end
• When a potential difference is applied between electrodes A and B, the fluid
will be set into motion near the wall region with a velocity in proportion to the
electroosmotic mobility of the wall material
• Because the ends of the mixing channel (between A and B) cannot be
penetrated by the flow, conservation of mass will dictate a flow inside the
core of the cross-section in the opposite direction to that near the walls.
• Thus a recirculating flow will be established within the mixing channel with
shear layers in the proximity of the walls.
Active Micromixers
• A broad variety of excitation forces have been used, including pressure
pulsations, electrical, magnetic, capillary, thermal, and acoustic.
• Evans et al. introduced pulsed-flow/pressure micromixer
• It was a chamber design realized on silicon with a quartz cover.
• The actuation was provided by thermally driven bubble valves/pumps
powered by integrated polysilicon heaters.
• It was complex and had a sizeable dead volume,
• This device is the first to incorporate the idea of improved mixing through
chaotic-advection-inducing flow pulsations
• A swirl-chamber mixer micromilled in PMMA was proposed by Chung et al.
• The swirling of the fluids was achieved by forward and backward pumping.
• The mixing chamber was fitted with two opposing channels of unit aspect
ratio tangent to the circular chamber.
• The pulsed flow and pressure micromixers are continuous-flow devices and
have been shown to improve mixing compared to their steady-state
counterparts leading to shorter mixing-channel lengths for Reynolds
numbers of order one or less.
• Lee et al made micromixers utilizing unsteady electrical fields
• They demonstrated a pressure driven, continuous-flow device
with periodic electrical excitation introduced in a chamber on
the flow path.
• They took advantage of dielectophoretic forces induced by the
inhomogeneous electrical field to improve mixing of dielectric
microparticles.
• Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) forcing to improve mixing on the
microscale was demonstrated by Solomon et al.
• They performed experiments comparing long-range chaotic
mixing of miscible and immiscible impurities in a time-periodic
flow by producing an alternating magnetic field that generated
alternating vortex structures due to MHD instability.