(32f) Design and Fabrication of Micromachined Sensor Platforms

Microhotplate devices are novel platforms for conductametric gas sensing applications. We have designed an array of microhotplate devices using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation's 0.35µm process. The goal is to suspend (by etching away surrounding material) microhotplate structures using: 1) a plasma etch to expose the silicon substrate and 2) tetramethylammonium hydroxide to perform an anisotropic wet etch of the silicon substrate. This paper outlines the work completed thus far in the design, fabrication and processing of the devices and a summary of the future work to develop a procedure to fabricate a microhotplate-based sensor device.