SU-8 based piezoresistive mechanical sensor

Abstract

We present the first SU-8 based piezoresistive mechanical sensor. Conventionally, silicon has been used as a piezoresistive material due to its high gauge factor and thereby high sensitivity to strain changes in a sensor. By using the fact that SU-8 is much softer than silicon and that a gold resistor is easily incorporated in SU-8, we have proven that a SU-8 based cantilever sensor is almost as sensitive to stress changes as the silicon piezoresistive cantilever. We demonstrate the chip fabrication, and characterization with respect to sensitivity, noise and device failure.