Design and Simulation of PVDF‐MOSFET Based MEMS Hydrophone
G. Uma, Mangalanathan Umapathy, Sumy Jose, V. Natarajan, M. Kathiresan · Instrumentation Science & Technology · 2007
Modeling has become a vital tool of investigation in all fields, since experimenting with real systems is not only costly, but also time‐consuming and even impossible in some situations. This work presents the design and simulation of an integrated PVDF‐based MEMS hydrophone with improved sensitivity, which contains a MOSFET sense amplifier. The piezoelectric polymer, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), senses the input acoustic signal. As hydrophone size decreases, it becomes necessary to provide an amplifier or buffer in close proximity to avoid sensitivity loss due to interconnect capacitance. This suggests the concept of hydrophones merged with electronics in an integrated circuit environment. So, the integration of PVDF with an on‐chip MOSFET is implemented. The extended gate electrode of the MOSFET is placed over an epitaxial layer isolated from the silicon substrate and is padded with a dielectric layer, SU‐8, which significantly reduces the extended gate capacitance and, therefore, increases the sensor sensitivity. The variation of the transducer output when the input acoustic signal is applied is studied. The simulation is done using the MEMS simulation software, Coventorware.