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Description
In varied applications, the sensor's raw signal must be conditioned to provide sufficiently accurate, error-free, and usable sensor data. The ability to cost-effectively and efficiently adjust and signal condition the sensor's output during sensor design, manufacturing, and packaging can significantly enhance overall production yield, functionality, and reduce manufacturing costs.
Traditional methods of signal conditioning the sensor, such as laser trimming or trim pots, can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and costly. Furthermore, conventional methods do not effectively measure and adjust for the temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) of the signal conditioning resistors, impairing the ability to perform high-precision trimming.
Microbridge Technologies, Inc. (Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 514-938-8089)(www.mbridgetech.com), a venture-backed, early stage product and technology licensing company specializing in micro-systems technology for electronics, micro-devices and sensor-based systems, has developed and introduced the MEMS (microelectromechanical systems)-based Rejustor(tm), purportedly the first electronically precision-adjustable passive micro-resistor device.
The electronically re-adjustable resistor, which uses a micro-membrane with an embedded micro-heater, suspended over a cavity in a silicon chip, is designed to eliminate the need for laser trimming or digital potentiometers.
The Rejustor, a passive, VLSI and MEMS-compatible micro-resistor based on conventional silicon integrated circuit technology, is non-volatile, and is re-adjustable, bi-directionally, to quite high precision, using only electrical signals. The Rejustor, moreover, can be temperature coefficient matched with other Rejustors using only electrical signals. Adjustments can be performed at low voltage and low current before or after packaging, or even in-circuit after years of operation.
"With the Rejustor, for the first time, circuit designers have at their disposal a low-cost, electronically-controlled, high-precision, bi-directional adjustment capability for in-circuit automation of resistive trimming in electronics," stated Mike Foster, Microbridge Technologies' CEO.
"Pairs of Rejustor devices can be resistance matched to typically better than 0.005% and, in a world's first, their temperature coefficient of resistance can be adjusted to match another Rejustor to better than 2 ppm/degree K, or intentionally adjusted to precise mismatch in TCR to help compensate electronic circuitry," stated Les Landsberger, Microbridge's chief technology officer.
The CMOS and BiCMOS process-compatible Rejustors can be incorporated into analog, mixed-signal, and systems-on-chip integrated circuit designs. Moreover, they will soon be available as discrete devices. Microbridge notes that Rejustors are especially intriguing for RF applications as passive adjustable resistors with low capacitance and excellent high-frequency performance.
"The combination of precision resistance adjustment and TCR matching, or controlled TCR mismatch, provided by the Rejustor takes analog and sensor... |
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