Impact of high-g and high vibration environments on piezoresistive pressure sensor performance

The impact of acceleration and vibration loads on a piezoresistive pressure sensor and its packaging components is investigated in some detail. For the sake of definiteness, sensor operation conditions in a helicopter rotor blade are considered. There, the sensor chip is loaded with static high-g accelerations up to 1000 g and vibrations up to 10 g. The sensor diaphragm, the chip adhesive and the bond interconnections all behave like elastic springs and therefore determine the functional behaviour as well as the reliability of the sensor under acceleration loads. Although an encapsulated pressure sensor chip design has been investigated, the results obtained are sufficiently generic to be useful also in other fields of pressure sensor operation in acceleration-loaded environments as for instance in aircraft or in automobiles.