Design and Analysis of Thin film MEMS based Humidity Sensor

Abstract

This paper presents the design and analysis of a thin film MEMS based sensor for perceiving humidity. Humidity instruments measure the quantities such as temperature, pressure, volume of air or gas, etc. The main motivation behind this work is to fulfill the need for sensing humidity in automotive, food/beverages, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Here, the sensor structure holds a very thin conducting film which detects the presence of gases such as ethanol, propane, steam, hydrogen, etc. The whole sensor structure was then mounted on a silicon substrate. COMSOL Multiphysics was used to design the Humidity sensor. Simulation of humidity sensor was analyzed for moisture detection in the atmosphere. The presence of gases and water vapor can be calculated with the variation of parameters such as temperature, resistance, potential difference across sensing electrodes. These parameters are better optimized by using MEMS CAD tool for better performance of the sensor