Miniaturised sensor node for tire pressure monitoring (e-CUBES)

Abstract

Tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) are beneficial for the environment and road and passenger safety. Miniaturizing the TPMS allows sensing of additional parameters. This paper presents a miniaturized TPMS with a volume less than 1 cm3, realised by 3D stacking and through-silicon via (TSV) technology. Suitable technologies with low electrical resistance and high bond strengths were evaluated for stacking the microcontroller, transceiver, pressure sensor and bulk acoustic resonator (BAR) in the TPMS. 60 μm deep W-filled TSVs with resistance 0.45 Ω and SnAg micro bumps with a bond strength of 53 MPa were used for stacking the transceiver to the microcontroller. TSVs through the whole wafer thickness with resistance 6 Ω were used for the pressure sensor. Au stud bumps were used for stacking the pressure sensor and BAR devices. The final TPMS stack was packaged in a moulded interconnect device (MID) package.