Integrated CMOS porous sensor having sensor electrodes formed with the interconnect conductors of a MOS circuit
AssigneeSilicon Laboratories Inc.
InventorTimothy Cummins
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A single chip wireless sensor comprises a microcontroller connected by a transmit/receive interface to a wireless antenna. The microcontroller is also connected to an 8 kB RAM, a USB interface, an RS232 interface, 64 kB flash memory, and a 32 kHz crystal. The device senses humidity and temperature, and a humidity sensor is connected by an 18 bit ΣΔ A-to-D converter to the microcontroller and a temperature sensor is connected by a 12 bit SAR A-to-D converter to the microcontroller. The device is an integrated chip manufactured in a single process in which both the electronics and sensor components are manufactured using standard CMOS processing techniques, applied to achieve both electronic and sensing components in an integrated process.
Claims20
An integrated sensor device comprising:
- MOS circuits in a semiconductor substrate;
- a sensor comprising sensor porous material for ingress of gas or humidity to be sensed and sensor electrodes;
- an interconnect stack comprising at least three interconnect levels, each interconnect level having interconnect conductors and insulating dielectric, said interconnect levels being over the substrate and being utilized for interconnecting the MOS circuits;
- the sensor electrodes being embedded in the insulating dielectric of at least one of the interconnect levels and being integrally formed with the interconnect conductors of the at least one of the interconnect levels;
- wherein the sensor is a capacitive sensor;
- wherein the sensor electrodes are capacitive electrodes;
- wherein at least some of the MOS circuits are directly beneath the sensor in a vertical dimension;
- and
- wherein the MOS circuits include a circuit for processing signals from the sensor electrodes.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.