Research of a novel ultra-high pressure sensor with high-temperature resistance

Ultra-high pressure measurement has significant applications in various fields such as high pressure synthesis of new materials and ultra-high pressure vessel monitoring. This paper proposes a novel ultra-high pressure sensor combining a truncated-cone structure and a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) piezoresistive element for measuring the pressure up to 1.6 GPa. The truncated-cone structure attenuates the measured pressure to a level that can be detected by the SOI piezoresistive element. Four piezoresistors of the SOI piezoresistive element are placed along specific crystal orientation and configured as a Wheatstone bridge to obtain voltage signals. The sensor has an advantage of high-temperature resistance, in that the structure of the piezoresistive element can avoid the leakage current at high temperature and the truncated-cone structure separates the piezoresistive element from the heat environment. Furthermore, the upper surface diameter of the truncated-cone structure is designed to be 2 mm for the application of small scale. The results of static calibration show that the sensor exhibits a good performance in hysteresis and repeatability. The temperature experiment indicates that the sensor can work steadily at high temperature. This study would provide a better insight to the research of ultra-high pressure sensors with larger range and smaller size.