Silicon monolithic microflow sensors: a review
Jiachou Wang, Dan Xue, Xinxin Li
Abstract
Abstract Flow measurement is an essential requirement in medical, industrial, automotive and environmental applications, Thanks to the rapid development of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) micro-fabrication techniques, silicon-based microflow sensor chips used as the key component of microfluidic control systems have attracted particular attentions due to the miniaturized chip-size, high precision, low power consumption, rapid response and low-cost batch-fabrication capability. Up to present, many different types of silicon microflow sensors have been proposed and developed. This paper provides a review on recently completed works on design, fabrication and properties of the MEMS-based silicon monolithic microflow sensors. Some technical challenges and application outlooks are also discussed in the paper.