504
7, APRIL 1, 2007
Silicon Carbide-Based Remote Wireless Optical
Pressure Sensor
Nabeel A. Riza, Fellow, IEEE, Farzan Ghauri, and Frank Perez
Abstract—Proposed is a silicon carbide (SiC) weak-lensing-
effect-based wireless optical sensor that allows safe, repeatable, and
accurate pressure measurement suitable for harsh environments.
This completely passive front-end sensor design uses a remoted
free-space optical beam that targets a single crystal SiC chip fitted
as an optical window within a pressure capsule. With increasing dif-
ferential capsule pressure, the SiC chip forms a weak convex mirror
with a changing focal length. By monitoring the chip reflected light
beam magnification, pressure in the capsule is determined. Using
a 633-nm wavelength laser beam, the proposed sensor is experi-
mentally tested at room temperature for 0- to 600-psi (0–41 atm)
differential pressures and a remoting distance of 2.5 m.
Index Terms—Optical sensors, pressure sensors.
I. INTRODUCTION
ARIOUS industrial and aerospace systems operate under
V extreme conditions of radiation, temperature (hot and
cold), pressure, and chemical corrosion via gases and liquids.
For optimal operations, these systems require durable and
reliable sensors for measurement of pressure. Both wired
and wireless attempts have been made to realize the desired
extreme environment handling pressure sensors. Wired op-
tical fiber-based pressure sensors have been proposed such as
using micromachined membranes [1], [2], fiber Bragg grat-
ings [3], and Fabry–Pérot cavities [4], [5]. Because extreme
environments can damage or destroy the required packaging
for protecting the remoting wires, wireless electronic pressure
sensors have also been implemented with limited success as the
required on-chip electronic circuits and power sources fail at
elevated temperatures [6], [7]. More recently, a wireless optical
sensor based on localized free-space laser beam targeting of
a single crystal silicon carbide (SiC) chip has been proposed
and demonstrated as an extreme environment temperature
sensor [8]. Further, it has been proposed that global targeting
of the SiC chip acting as an optical window within a pressure
capsule package can realize a wireless pressure sensor [9], [10].
Hence, the purpose of this letter is to demonstrate, for the first
time, a long-distance (e.g., several meters) remoted wireless
operation of the proposed pressure sensor concept that involves
monitoring the weak lensing effect imposed on a SiC chip
Manuscript received October 31, 2006; revised December 11, 2006. This
letter was prepared with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
under Award DE-FC36-03NT41923 and does not necessarily reflect the views
of the DOE.
N. A. Riza is with Nuonics, Inc., Winter Park, FL 32792 USA. He also with
the College of Optics-CREOL, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
32816-2700 USA.
F. Ghauri is with the College of Optics-CREOL, University of Central
Florida, Orlando, FL 32816-2700 USA.
F. Perez is with Nuonics, Inc., Winter Park, FL 32792 USA.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2007.893752
1041-1135/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO.
Fig. 1. Proposed SiC-chip based remote wireless optical pressure sensor.
when subjected to differential pressure in its pressure capsule.
SiC is chosen as the front-end all-passive sensor material due
to its robust mechanical, chemical, and optical properties when
subject to extreme environments. The rest of the letter describes
the design principles and experimental operations of the tested
wireless optical pressure sensor.
II. SiC-BASED OPTICAL WIRELESS SENSOR DESIGN
Fig. 1 shows the design of the proposed pressure sensor. A
collimated laser beam passes through a beam splitter (BS) and
after traveling a distance targets at normal incidence the SiC
chip fitted as a window in a high-pressure capsule (HPC). The
beam reflections from the SiC chip travel a distance of
and are captured by an optical image detector (OID). Both faces
of the SiC chip are mutually parallel and optically flat (e.g.,
wavelength/20) and chip thickness (e.g., 300 m) is small com-
pared to the remoting distance. With a deployed laser beam
that is highly collimated (e.g., 1 mrad beam divergence) and
the distance designed to be rather large, e.g., several me-
ters, the pressure effect on the SiC chip is a mechanical de-
formation that becomes optically observable as a weak lensing
effect. Thus, only the SiC-based HPC is placed in the hostile
zone while the transceiver module containing the laser source,
alignment optics, and the OID is meters away, allowing safe
and remote pressure measurement. Note that ideally the HPC is
made from a robust high-temperature material whose coefficient
of thermal expansion (CTE) is matched to the CTE of single
crystal SiC window. More specifically, the presently available
nonporous ceramic HALSIC-S from HaldenWanger, Germany,
that is made from a sintered SiC form has a CTE of K
that is closely matched to the single crystal 6-H SiC CTE of
K. Hence, by using CTE-matched materials for the
window and the HPC packaging, one can essentially remove the
effect of absolute temperature values and temperature changes
on the spatial lens-like deformation of the SiC chip. Do note that
the changing temperature over a high-temperature range (e.g.,
RIZA et al.: SiC-BASED REMOTE WIRELESS OPTICAL PRESSURE SENSOR
Fig. 2. Shown is the weak lens (WL) optical ray-trace model that describes
how the SiC chip acts like a pressure-dependent concave lens that diverges and
magnifies the input laser beam.
room temperature to 1000 C) will indeed change the refractive
index of the SiC chip material and also result in chip thickness
change [8], [11]. Nevertheless, both these effects due to temper-
ature uniformly effect the entire chip and hence create a global
on axis optical path length change, but do not cause a global
lens-like spatial deformation that is used to form the proposed
wireless pressure sensor. The beam reflections from the SiC chip
are produced as reflections from the chip front and back surfaces
that are observed by the OID. In the absence of any differential
pressure, i.e., pressure inside the capsule is equal to the ambient
atmospheric pressure outside the capsule, the SiC chip acts like
a flat mirror. Thus, the laser beam after reflection from the chip
continues to diverge in accordance with Gaussian beam propa-
gation and divergence. However, in the presence of differential
pressure , the SiC chip with a circular pressure boundary of
radius “ ” (in centimeters) bulges outwards with a maximum
central displacement of (in centimeters) given by
and
for the clamped-edge model (1) and supported-edge model (2),
respectively [9]. Here, is the SiC rigidity constant and is
its Poisson’s ratio. As shown in the earlier work [9], [10], the
SiC chip under differential pressure acts as a weak convex
mirror or equivalently as a concave lens with focal length
in centimeters given by [9]
cm
Fig. 2 shows the weak lens optical ray-trace model used to de-
sign the proposed remote pressure sensor where the SiC chip
acts like a pressure-dependent concave lens that diverges the
input laser beam. Thus, the beam diameter measured by
the OID provides a value for the sensed pressure . For ex-
ample, at , , and , the initial beam
diameter on the OID. Using Fig. 2, one can define a pressure-de-
pendent sensor magnification factor given by
505
with in centimeters. Thus, by measuring using the
OID, one can remotely deduce the pressure using the calibra-
tion data stored in the computer image processor. For sensor cal-
ibration, one uses a reference pressure gauge to record versus
data as is varied over a desired calibration range. Do note
that the larger the initial incident and detected beam diameter
(at ), the proportionally larger the beam size increase for
a given pressure increase. Thus, to increase measurement res-
olution of the sensor, one should exploit the full active area of
the SiC chip with a large beam and then one must detect the re-
ceived beam boundary change with a high resolution (or small
pixel size) camera. In effect, this pressure sensor is based on
edge detection principles as the camera is used to monitor the
beam-edge expansion/motion as the pressure changes.
III. REMOTE PRESSURE SENSING EXPERIMENT
As a first step to test the proposed remote sensor, a 6H-SiC
chip is fitted in a stainless steel test HPC [9]. The SiC chip
deployed has a slight wedge-like shape that results in the ob-
servation of five fringes across the illuminated 5-mm diameter
chip face. Because this initial experiment is being performed
at a stable 24 C room temperature, one can simply choose to
monitor the fringe period instead of the entire beam boundary
to calibrate the sensor for measured versus . In this special
case, we define as the fringe period for pressure and
as the fringe period for , giving .
A 10-mW 632.8-nm wavelength, linear-polarization HeNe laser
raw beam is deployed. This raw laser beam has an exit min-
imum Gaussian beam waist diameter of 0.96 mm and a Gaussian
beam divergence of 0.84 mrad. The SiC chip has thickness of
280 m and a pressure boundary radius mm. The SiC
Poisson’s ratio and Young’s Modulus GPa
(1) [8]. The HPC is connected to a compressed air cylinder via a
high-pressure connector. A manual regulator is used to control
the pressure inside the capsule relative to the external ambient
(2) atmospheric pressure. The HPC pressure is measured using a
GE Sensing Digital Test Gauge Model Druck DPI 104. The re-
mote distance is 2.5 m, and a charged-coupled device
(CCD) is used as the two-dimensional OID. The laser beam,
in addition to the remote distance m, travels a
distance of 2 m (i.e., , measured from laser to the SiC
chip) and thus the expected Gaussian beam diameter with a total
beam travel distance of m is given by
mm. At , this measured initial beam diam-
eter on the screen is approximately 7.5 mm which closely
(3) matches the expected diameter. Using (1)–(4), the pressure-de-
pendent sensor magnification of the SiC chip versus is
calculated for the mentioned two distinct mechanical models for
seating the chip within the HPC [9], [10]. Using the CCD, SiC
chip retro-reflected beam images formed on a screen (placed at
the OID location in Fig. 1) are captured for a Data Set 1 range of
– psi with a step of 25 psi. By computer processing the
acquired images, pressure-dependent is calculated which
leads to the calculation of . The experiment is conducted a
second time for a Data Set 2 range of –610 psi with a step
of 25 psi. As shown in Fig. 3, the results from the two experi-
ments closely follow each other, indicating the repeatable robust
(4)
behavior of the sensor. Also, experimental data shows that the
506 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 7, APRIL 1, 2007

Fig. 5. Plot shows the resolution of the pressure sensor calculated by taking the
gradient dP=dX of the pressure versus fringe period curves.
Fig. 3. Plot shows the experimental beam magnification M for the two exper-
imental runs along with expected theoretical magnification based on the sup-
ported-edge and clamped-edge mechanical models.
have been demonstrated. Initial experimental results obtained
at room temperature show the sensor to be a reliable instru-
ment over a range of 0–610 psi with an average resolution of
4.5 psi. Future important work relates to experimental demon-
stration of the proposed sensor under changing temperature con-
ditions using a sintered SiC HPC packaging that is currently
under development.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Applicote Assoc. for support
on the high-pressure test capsule.

Fig. 4. Plot shows the measured optical fringe period X (P ) produced by dif-
ferential pressure (P ) for SiC chip-based pressure sensor where the chip is
wedge-like. Also shown are the equations resulting from the quadratic curve
fitting for the two data sets.
mechanical behavior of the SiC chip shifts from a clamped-edge
model towards a supported-edge model. Thus, the experimental
results are a hybrid model and adequately represented within the
extreme theoretical cases of clamped versus supported edges.
Fig. 4 shows plots of measured in pixels with in-
creasing for the two conducted experiments. For this
demonstrated pressure sensor, resolution is determined by a
single pixel shift of the fringe period and hence is calculated
by taking the gradient of the curves in Fig. 4. From
Fig. 3, the increment in magnification with increment in is
greater at lower pressures than at higher pressures. Therefore, as
shown in Fig. 5, this pressure sensor resolution is better at lower
pressures as compared to higher pressures. For example, Fig. 5
calculated 1.85- and 9-psi resolutions are at 25- and 450-psi
pressures, respectively. The experimental sensor system optical
efficiency is 8.5%, dominated by the 6-dB (75%) loss due to
BS operations and 34% reflectivity of the SiC chip.
IV. CONCLUSION
The principles of a SiC-based wireless optical sensor that fea-
tures a completely passive front-end and a remoted transceiver
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