Fabrication and Characterization of 2-DOF Micro Convective Accelerometer

This paper presents the development of a dual axis convective microaccelerometer, whose working principle is based on the convective heat transfer and thermo-resistive effect of lightly-doped silicon. Different with developed convective accelerometer, the sensor utilizes novel structures of the sensing element which can reduce at least 93% of thermal-induced stress. By using numerical method, the chip dimensions and the package size are optimized. The sensitivity of the sensor was simulated; other characteristics such as frequency response, shock resistance, noise problem are also deeply investigated. The sensor has been fabricated by MEMS process and characterized by experiments.