A barometric pressure sensor based on the air-gap scale effect in a cantilever

The most common structure for a conventional barometric pressure sensor consists of a vacuum-sealed cavity and a diaphragm. However, we hypothesize that a simple structure with an unsealed cavity and an ultra-thin cantilever can provide more sensitive measurements. We produced a 300-nm-thick cantilever with a small spring constant, which made the cantilever sensitive to low pressures. We demonstrated that miniaturizing the air-gap of the cantilever enables the sensor to measure barometric pressure changes at a low pressure change rate with a high resolution, which was 1 Pa at 0.05 Hz, and for a gap size of 1.7 μm.