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Integrated thermopile vacuum gauge with an XeF2 dry-etching process

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Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part N: Journal of Nanoengineering and Nanosystems

Published online on

Abstract

In this article, an integrated thermopile vacuum gauge with an XeF2 dry-etching process is presented. The integrated thermopile vacuum gauge consists of an N-polysilicon heater and 38 N-polysilicon/Al thermocouples. By using XeF2 front-side isotropic post-etching technique, the integrated vacuum gauge structure was released, and a small size of the integrated thermopile vacuum gauge structure about 0.4 x 1.5 mm2 has been achieved. Compared with applying a constant voltage to the integrated thermopile vacuum gauge, applying a constant power to the gauge is more sensitive. The experimental results show that the dynamic pressure range of the integrated thermopile vacuum sensor is 10–2–105 Pa.