Design and analysis of a touch mode MEMS capacitive pressure sensor for IUPC

In this paper, a novel design of diaphragm based pressure sensor has been proposed, which may find its application in Intra Uterine Pressure Catheter (IUPC) system. The novelty of the device lies in the fact that it has got patterned slots over the top layer of the diaphragm similar to a chess-board pattern. This sensor is then compared with a plane diaphragm of same dimensions. In same range of input pressure, results show that the plane diaphragm has capacitive sensitivity of 0.06385 pF/kPa, while in the slotted diaphragm, it is 0.17355 pF/kPa, three times as that of the plane one. However, the static pull-in voltage comes out to be almost 16 volt due to constant air gap of 0.4 μm for both the cases. Due to pull-in voltage in the range of 11-20 volts, it can also be used as an electrostatic actuator in switching networks.