An integrated eddy current detection and imaging system on a silicon chip

Eddy current probes have been used for many years for numerous sensing applications including crack detection in metals. However, these applications have traditionally used the eddy current effect in the form of a physically wound single or different probe pairs which of necessity must be made quite large compared to microelectronics dimensions. Also, the traditional wound probe can only take a point reading, although that point might include tens of individual cracks or crack arrays; thus, conventional eddy current probes are beset by two major problems: (1) no detailed information can be obtained about the crack or crack array; and (2) for applications such as quality assurance, a vast amount of time must be taken to scan a complete surface. Laboratory efforts have been made to fabricate linear arrays of single turn probes in a thick film format on a ceramic substrate as well as in a flexible cable format; however, such efforts inherently suffer from relatively large size requirements as well as sensitivity issues. Preliminary efforts to fully extend eddy current probing from a point or single dimensional level to a two dimensional micro-eddy current format on a silicon chip, which might overcome all of the above problems, are presented.