Monolithic integrated surface micromachined absolute pressure sensors with programmable linearization and temperature compensation

This paper introduces a noval familiy of monolithic integrated surface micromachined pressure sensors with both linearization and temperature compensation done on-chip. All sensor parameters are fully programmable and on-chip stored using integrated EEPROM. Surface micromachined capacitive pressure sensors are predestinated for monolithic integrated sensor systems due to their compatibility to a standard CMOS process. This enables a cost effective production. Compared with piezoresistive pressure sensors, the surface micromachined pressure sensors are superior with respect to high overpressure stability, simple packaging, ease of monolithic integration of signal conditioning electronics, low power consumption and small chip size.