Membrane sandwich squeeze film pressure sensors

Abstract

Squeeze film pressure sensors, exploiting the dynamical modification of the mechanical properties of oscillating elements due to the compression of a fluid in a small gap region, allow for direct and absolute pressure measurements. This tutorial article discusses the working principles of membrane sandwich squeeze film pressure sensors, i.e. sensors consisting in a parallel arrangement of two large area, ultrathin suspended films forming a few-micron gap and immersed in a fluid, and focuses on their operation in the free molecular flow regime. The effects of gas pressure on the vibrations of the membrane resonators and their coupled dynamics are discussed in general terms before recent experimental implementations using high tensile stress silicon nitride membranes are presented.

8 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Centimeter-scale suspended photonic crystal mirrors
• Effects of pressure on suspended micromechanical membrane arrays
• Stress-controlled frequency tuning and parametric amplification of the vibrations of coupled nanomembranes

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Optical spatial differentiation with suspended subwavelength gratings
• Squeeze-film effect on atomically thin resonators in the high-pressure limit
• Squeeze film absolute pressure sensors with sub-millipascal sensitivity
• Profilometry and stress analysis of suspended nanostructured thin films
• Mechanical mode engineering with orthotropic metamaterial membranes
• Polarization-independent optical spatial differentiation with a doubly-resonant one-dimensional guided-mode grating