Trench-Hall devices

Abstract

A trench-Hall device sensitive to magnetic inductions parallel to the chip surface is reported in this paper. The vertically oriented active region is defined by two parallel trenches with a distance of only 2.4 /spl mu/m. Deep contacts connect the active region of the device at its bottom at a depth of 20 /spl mu/m. These deep contacts allow a symmetrical operating condition of the active region analogous to a lateral symmetrical Hall plate, which is favorable for dynamic offset reduction. With the presented technology, trench-Hall devices with a sensitivity of 320 V/A with a nonlinearity below 0.1% are realized. Additionally, the presented fabrication technique enables the electrically insulated cointegration of sensor and circuitry on a single CMOS chip.