Evaluation of thin film p-type single crystal silicon for use as a CMOS Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD)

•Single crystal silicon Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTDs) made in SOI CMOS process are reported for the first time.•Effects of RTDs’ resistive track length and two different power tracks metallization on their performance are investigated.•The reported RTDs are highly sensitive, have good line...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors and actuators. A. Physical. 2018-11, Vol.283, p.159-168
Main Authors: Mehmood, Zahid, Mansoor, Mohtashim, Haneef, Ibraheem, Ali, S. Zeeshan, Udrea, Florin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminum
Circuit reliability
CMOS
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)
Hysteresis
Insulation
Life span
Linearity
MEMS
Metal oxide semiconductors
Metallizing
Microelectromechanical systems
P-type silicon
Platinum
Power consumption
Reproducibility
Resistance thermometers
Resistive Temperature Detectors (RTD)
Sensitivity
Sensors
Silicon
Silicon on Insulator (SOI)
Silicon substrates
Single crystals
Temperature
Temperature sensors
Thermal management
Thermodynamic properties
Thin films
Tungsten
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Summary:•Single crystal silicon Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTDs) made in SOI CMOS process are reported for the first time.•Effects of RTDs’ resistive track length and two different power tracks metallization on their performance are investigated.•The reported RTDs are highly sensitive, have good linearity, low hysteresis, excellent repeatability and reproducibility.•The Silicon RTDs are three times more sensitive and cover 74% less die area than the best metallic RTD reported previously.•These SOI CMOS Silicon RTDs can be easily integrated with a wide range of CMOS sensors and circuits at a much lower cost. Temperature monitoring and thermal management of CMOS circuits / sensors is often required for long term circuit reliability and sensors temperature compensations. The ideal solution is to co-fabricate the temperature sensors along with the CMOS circuits and other sensors using CMOS materials and the same CMOS processes. In this paper we therefore, report on the fabrication and thermal characterization of such thin film temperature sensors. The thin film Resistance Temperature Detectors (RTDs) are made of single crystal p-type silicon on a silicon substrate using a Silicon on Insulator (SOI) Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process. The influence of thin film length and width on the response of RTDs has been investigated. Furthermore, the effects of aluminum (Al) and tungsten (W) metallization used for power tracks on the response of RTDs have been studied. To assess the performance of the RTDs based on SOI CMOS p-type silicon, in addition to sensitivity and TCR, their power consumption, linearity, hysteresis, repeatability, reproducibility and expected life span have also been evaluated. The p-type silicon RTDs consume very less power (i.e. 0.9 μW only) and demonstrate a sensitivity of 13.88 Ω / oC, which is much higher than the previously reported CMOS RTDs and widely used non-CMOS platinum RTDs. The RTDs also exhibit a linear response (98.9% fsd), an excellent repeatability and significantly low hysteresis with maximum variation of 0.2% between forward and reverse cycle. These RTDs also boast good reproducibility, within the wafer and wafer to wafer, with maximum sensitivity variation of 1.3% between different tested samples. The expected life span of the RTD is > 10 years. These inexpensive RTDs are therefore, good candidates for use as temperature sensors on CMOS circuits / sensors system.
ISSN:0924-4247
1873-3069
DOI:10.1016/j.sna.2018.09.062