A liquid shear-stress sensor fabricated using wafer bonding technology

The authors report on the fabrication and testing of a microfabricated silicon floating-element (120 mu m*140 mu m) shear-stress sensor designed to detect high shear stresses (1-100 KPa) in fluid environments. Wafer bonding technology is used to produce a thin (5 mu m) dielectrically isolated silicon layer (allowing piezoresistive transduction in a half-bridge readout scheme) which is further processed to develop the floating-element sensor. The authors describe the details of the sensor fabrication, modeling of the sensor response, and the results of testing. There is good agreement between the modeled response of the sensor and the experimental data, and the sensor has also maintained its structural integrity under severe conditions.<>