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Engineering >> 2023, Volume 21, Issue 2 doi: 10.1016/j.eng.2022.06.018

A MEMS Micro Force Sensor Based on a Laterally Movable Gate Field-Effect Transistor (LMGFET) with a Novel Decoupling Sandwich Structure

a State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, International Joint Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies, Overseas Expertise Introduction Center for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Nano Measurement Technologies Discipline Innovation, Xi’an Jiaotong University (Yantai) Research Institute for Intelligent Sensing Technology and System, School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
b Shandong Laboratory of Yantai Advanced Materials and Green Manufacturing, Yantai 265503, China
c Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
d State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150006, China
e Eleventh Research Institute, Sixth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Co., Xi'an 710100, China
f Department of Control and Instrumentation Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
g Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999099, China

Received: 2021-09-03 Revised: 2022-05-05 Accepted: 2022-06-05 Available online: 2022-08-13

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Abstract

This paper presents the development of a novel micro force sensor based on a laterally movable gate field-effect transistor (LMGFET). A precise electrical model is proposed for the performance evaluation of small-scale LMGFET devices and exhibits improved accuracy in comparison with previous models. A novel sandwich structure consisting of a gold cross-axis decoupling gate array layer and two soft photoresistive SU-8 layers is utilized. With the proposed dual-differential sensing configuration, the output current of the LMGFET lateral operation under vertical interference is largely eliminated, and the relative output error of the proposed sensor decreases from 4.53% (traditional differential configuration) to 0.01%. A practicable fabrication process is also developed and simulated for the proposed sensor. The proposed LMGFET-based force sensor exhibits a sensitivity of 4.65 µA·nN−1, which is comparable with vertically movable gate field-effect transistor (VMGFET) devices, but has an improved nonlinearity of 0.78% and a larger measurement range of ±5.10 µN. These analyses provide a comprehensive design optimization of the electrical and structural parameters of LMGFET devices and demonstrate the proposed sensor’s excellent force-sensing potential for biomedical micromanipulation applications.

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