Research on double-barrier resonant tunneling effect based stress measurement methods

Abstract

Piezoresistive effect of semiconductor materials is often used in microsensors as a sensing principle. Resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) have been proved to have negative differential resistance effect, and their current-voltage characteristics change as a function of stress, which can be generated by external mechanical loads, such as pressures, accelerations and so on. According to this, the Meso-piezoresistive effect of RTDs can be used for stress measurement. This paper discusses two double-barrier resonant tunneling effect based stress measurement methods, including an RTD-Wheatstone bridge based method originally proposed. According to the results from the RTD-Wheatstone bridge based experiment, the piezoresistive sensitivity of RTD is adjustable in a range of 3 orders. And the largest piezoresistive sensitivity of RTD is larger than that of common semiconductor materials, such as silicon and GaAs. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.