A fully integrated surface micromachined pressure sensor with low temperature dependency

The sensor presented here has been developed for the measurement of absolute pressure in the fields of automotive and industrial applications. The integration of the system consists of a pressure sensor and a signal conditioning circuit with an analog output on a chip of 3.6mm². The fabrication technique to form the sensor is surface micromachining implemented in a standard 1.5µm CMOS process allowing the construction of very small pressure sensor elements with exellent mechanical properties. The temperature coefficient of the hole system is lower than 200 ppm/øC without any compensation. It can be used in a temperature range of -40øC to +125øC.