Abstract

It has been recently established in our work and others that boron-doped polycrystalline diamond films (PDF) have piezoresistivity (PZR) [1,2,3]. This property opens PDF to the field of sensor applications using strain sensing. Polycrystalline diamond films have been prepared with microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method and boron-doped to p-type semiconductors. In addition, by combining the piezoresistive effect in doped PDF and the insulating property of undoped PDF, whereby doped diamond resistors reside on a dielectric diamond substrate diaphragm, a monolithic all-diamond microstructure for examining the strain response of patterned p-doped diamond PZRs was fabricated and characterized. This work examines some critical issues of diamond for strain sensing applications such as its rupture stress and edge stress of diamond diaphragm and the high temperature responses of a diamond strain sensor.