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This paper reports on the design, fabrication, and thermomechanical study of ceramic LC resonators for wireless pressure reading, verified at room temperature, at 500 °C and at 1000 °C for pressures up to 2.5 bar. Five different devices were fabricated from high-temperature co-fired ceramics (HTCC) and characterized. Alumina green tape sheets were screen printed with platinum paste, micromachined, laminated, and fired. The resulting samples were 21 mm  ×  19 mm with different thicknesses. An embedded communicator part was integrated with either a passive backing part or with a pressure-sensing element, including an 80 µm thick and 6 mm diameter diaphragm. The study includes measuring thermally and mechanically induced resonance frequency shifts, and thermally induced deformations. For the pressure sensor device, contributions from changes in the relative permittivity and from expanding air trapped in the cavity were extracted. The devices exhibited thermomechanical robustness during heating, regardless of the thickness of the backing. The pressure sensitivity decreased with increasing temperature from 15050 ppm bar⁻¹ at room temperature to 2400 ppm bar⁻¹ at 1000 °C, due to the decreasing pressure difference between the external pressure and the air pressure inside the cavity.

A first realization of membranes by draping a graphite insert with ceramic green body sheets, and a study on the relationship between circuit metallization, made by double- layer screen-printing of platinum and electroplating of silver on top of platinum, and the practical read range of ceramic LC resonators for high-temperature pressure measurements, are presented. As a quality factor reference, two-port microstrip meander devices were positively evaluated. To study interdiffusion between silver and platinum, test samples were annealed at 500, 700, and 900 °C for 4, 36, 72, and 96 hours. The LC resonators were fabricated with both metallization methods, and the practical read range at room temperature was evaluated. Pressure sensitive membranes were characterized for pressures up to 2.5 bar at room temperature, 500 and up to 900°C. Samples electroplated with silver exhibited performance equal to or better than double-layer platinum samples for up to 60 hours at 500°C, 20 hours at 700°C, and for 1 hour at 900°C, which was correlated with the degree of interdiffusion as determined from cross- sectional analysis. The LC resonator samples with double-layer platinum exhibited a read range of 61 mm, and the samples with platinum and silver exhibited a read range of 59 mm. The lowest sheet resistance, and, thereby, the highest read range of 86 mm, was obtained with a silver electroplated LC resonator sample after 36 hours of annealing at 500°C. 

A microscale ceramic high-temperature combustor with a built-in temperature sensor and source of oxygen has been designed, manufactured and characterized. The successful in situ electroplating and oxidation of copper, and the use of copper oxide as the source of oxygen were demonstrated. It was shown that residual stresses from electroplating, copper oxidation and oxide decomposition did not cause much deformation of the substrate but influenced mainly the integrity and adhesion of the metal films. The process had influence on the electrical resistances, however. Calibration of the temperature sensor and correlation with IR thermography up to 1000 °C revealed a nearly linear sensor behavior. Demonstration of combustion in a vacuum chamber proved that no combustion had occurred before release of oxygen from the metal oxide resource.

This paper presents the integration and pressure sensor operation of platinum bond wires in High- Temperature Co-fired alumina (HTCC). Devices were fabricated with a 50 μm diameter wire suspended across a 500 μm wide cavity in green-body state HTCC, electrically connected to screen printed alumina conductors. The substrate shrinkage during sintering to a cavity width of 400 μm causes the wire element to elevate from the cavity ́s bottom surface. Resulting devices were compared with reference devices, containing screen-printed sensor elements, as Pirani gauges operated at 100 °C in constant-resistance mode, and in dynamic mode with a feeding current of 1 A in a pressure range from 10-4 Torr to atmospheric pressure. Also, devices with wire lengths between 500 and 3500 μm were operated and studied in constant-resistance and dynamic mode. Lastly, a device is demonstrated in operation at a mean temperature of 830 °C. The results include wire elements with a consistent elevation from their substrate surfaces, with irregularities along the wires. The wire devices exhibit a faster pressure response in dynamic mode than the reference devices do but operate similarly in constant-resistance mode. Increasing the wire element length shows an increasing dynamic pressure range but a decreasing maximum sensitivity. The sensitivity is retained in high temperature mode, but the dynamic range is extended from about 10 Torr to about 700 Torr.

This paper reports on a novel method for manufacturing microscopic Langmuir probes with spherical tips from platinum bond wires by fusing for plasma characterization in microplasma sources. Here, the resulting endpoints, formed by droplets on the ends of a fused wire, are intended to act as spherical Langmuir probes. For studying the fusing behavior, bond wires were wedge bonded over a 2 mm wide slit, to emulate the final application, and fused with different voltages and currents. For electrical isolation, a set of wires were coated with a 4 μm thick layer of Parylene before they were fused. After fusing, the gap size, as well as the shape and area of the ends of the remaining stubs were measured. The yield of the process was also investigated, and the fusing event was studied using a high-speed camera for analyzing its dynamics. Four characteristic tip shapes were observed: spherical, folded, serpentine shaped and semi-spherical. The stub length leveled out at  ~400 μm as the fusing power increased. The fusing of the coated wires required a higher power to yield a spherical shape. Finally, a Parylene coated bond wire was integrated into a stripline split-ring resonator (SSRR) microplasma source, and was fused to form two Langmuir probes with spherical endpoints. These probes were used for measuring the I–V characteristics of a plasma generated by the SSRR. In a voltage range between  −60 V and 60 V, the fused stubs exhibited the expected behavior of spherical Langmuir probes, and will be considered for further integration.

Research and development of small satellites has continued to expand over the last decades. However, propulsion systems with adequate performance have persisted to be a great challenge. In this paper, the effects of three different heaters on the specific impulse and overall thrust efficiency of a cold gas microthruster are presented. They consisted of a conventional, printed resistive thick-film element, a freely suspended wire, and a stripline split-ring resonator microplasma source and were integrated in a single device made from high-temperature co-fired ceramics (HTCC). The devices were evaluated in two setups, where the first measured thrust and the other shock cell geometry. In addition, the resistive elements were evaluated as gas temperature sensors. The microplasma source was found to provide the greatest improvement in both specific impulse and thrust efficiency, increasing the former from an un- heated level of 44 s to 55 s when heating with a power of 1.1 W. This corresponded to a thrust efficiency of 53 %. This could be compared to the results from the wire and printed heaters which were 50 s and 18 %, and 45 s and 14 %, respectively. The combined results also showed that imaging the shock cells of a plasma heated thruster was a simple and effective way to determine its performance compared to the traditional thrust balance method.