Conclusions and Future Work

Abstract

The final goal of this thesis was the fabrication of a CMOS-integrated piezoresistive pressure sensor. SiGe MEMS was selected as the technology platform in which to reach this goal. This dissertation provides all the steps for the successful design and fabrication of MEMS pressure sensors directly on top of their readout circuitry, allowing for smaller chips. The monolithic integration of MEMS on top of CMOS is also expected to improve the signal/noise ratio as compared to the traditional hybrid approaches: by processing the pressure signal in close proximity to the transducer, the parasitics introduced by the IC-MEMS interconnects and the effect of external noise can be greatly reduced. In this chapter an overview of the key aspects and contributions of this dissertation is presented, together with a list of recommendations to further improve the technology and the performance of the fabricated devices.