High Resolution and Fast Response of Humidity Sensor Based on AlN Cantilever With Two Groups of Segmented Electrodes

Resonant cantilever based on piezoelectric materials is one of the most promising platforms for real-time humidity sensing. In this letter, we propose a humidity sensor based on an AlN piezoelectric microcantilever with a high-order resonant mode and a sensing layer of MoS
₂
. The top electrode of cantilever is designed into two groups of segmented electrodes in order to achieve a high intensity of the resonance peak of the cantilever resonator operated at a high-order mode. Compared with the humidity sensor based on a standard cantilever with the same dimension, the sensitivity of the newly proposed humidity sensor is increased from 5.99 to 778 Hz/%RH when the humidity is about 80%RH. The resolution is increased from 0.21%RH to 0.025%RH because of the improvement of the ratio of sensitivity to noise, which cannot be achieved simply by increasing the frequency. The sensor shows a low hysteresis (5.8%) in a wide humidity sensing range from 10%RH to 90%RH. Moreover, the proposed humidity sensor has good short-term repeatability, fast response (0.6 s) and recovery (8 s) to humidity changes, indicating its great potential for fast-response detection.