High performance electric field micro sensor with combined differential structure

This paper presents a high performance electric field micro sensor with combined differential structure. The sensor consists of two backward laid micro-machined chips, each packaged by polymer and metal. The novel combined differential structure effectively reduces various environmental affections, such as thermal drift, humidity drift and electrostatic charge accumulation. The sensor is tested in near-ground place as well as balloon-borne sounding. In different weather conditions, the measurement results showed good agreement with those of the commercial electric field mill.