#1.3 Extending MEMS anemometers to harsh environments

For the last thirty years, significant developments had been made towards extending silicon-based Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and solid state electronics to silicon carbide (SiC). As its thermal, chemical and mechanical stability makes it the ideal candidate for harsh environments applications (Mehregany et al. 1998)⁶⁸, CMOS-compatible micromachining processes had been developed (Flemish et al. 1996)⁶⁹ and led to the first SiC devices for direct WSS (Pan et al. 1999)⁶³, piezoresistive pressure measurement (Okojie et al. 1998)⁷⁰ and cantilever anemometry (Okojie et al. 2004)⁷¹. The 125 °C thermal limit of CMOS was also addressed by building SiC-based solid state devices handling higher temperatures ranges (Clark et al. 2011)⁷². Particularly, as space missions demand stringent constraints on temperature, NASA Glenn Research Center built SiC conditioning electronics functioning up to 800 °C for extended periods of time (Okojie et al. 2022)⁷³. Together, these breakthroughs demonstrate the interest and suitability of SiC for sensing in harsh environments, especially those involving high temperatures.

(Okamoto 2013)⁷⁴, (Okojie 2024)⁷⁵, (Perry 1982)⁷⁶