Design and simulation of an aluminum nitride piezoelectric resonant pressure sensor

Abstract

In this paper, a novel aluminum nitride (AlN) resonant pressure sensor with piezoelectric-excitation and piezoelectric-detection is presented. The key structure of this resonator is an AlN flexible beam. Parallel electrodes are designed on the beam to excite the resonance structure in-plane. All layers of this AlN resonant structure are grown on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer by the deposition process. Anchor islands are fabricated in the top silicon layer of the SOI. The structure is designed and optimized by finite element simulation software, and the performance of this pressure sensor is simulated. The resonance frequency is 60.04 kHz, and the sensitivity is 13.6 Hz/kPa under a pressure range of 0–120 kPa. This AlN sensor is advantageous in that its structure and fabrication processes are simple, and it is a new choice for resonant pressure sensors.