US Patent 7723232 Full backside etching for pressure sensing silicon

The formation of a semiconductor sensing device is disclosed, where the device can be used to sense pressure, for example. The device is formed by etching the entire backside of a semiconductor substrate or wafer. This streamlines the fabrication process by omitting a number of steps that would otherwise be required to selectively etch certain locations of the substrate. This also improves device performance and compactness by allowing associated support circuitry to be formed closer to a sensing region, and more particularly piezoelectric elements of the sensing region.