High-temperature high-sensitivity AlN-on-SOI Lamb wave resonant strain sensor

Abstract

A piezoelectric AlN-on-SOI structured MEMS Lamb wave resonator (LWR) is presented for high-temperature strain measurement. The LWR has a composite membrane of a 1 μm thick AlN film and a 30 μm thick device silicon layer. The excited acoustic waves include Rayleigh wave and Lamb waves. A tensile strain sensor has been prepared with one LWR mounted on a uniaxial tensile plate, and its temperature characteristics from 15.4°C to 250°C and tensile strain behaviors from 0 μϵ to 400 μϵ of Rayleigh wave and S4 mode Lamb wave were tested. The temperature test verifies the adaptability of the tensile strain sensor to temperature up to 250°C, and S4 mode Lamb wave and Rayleigh wave represent almost the same temperature characteristics. The strain test demonstrates that S4 mode Lamb wave shows much higher strain sensitivity (-0.48 ppm/μϵ) than Rayleigh wave (0.05 ppm/μϵ) and confirms its advantage of strain sensitivity. Finally, for this one-LWR strain sensor, a method of beat frequency between S4 mode Lamb wave and Rayleigh wave is proposed for temperature compensation and high-sensitivity strain readout.