A reel-to-reel compatible printed accelerometer

Author

Klejwa, N. ; Hennessy, R.G. ; Chen, J.-W.P. ; Howe, R.T.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

5-9 June 2011

Firstpage

699

Lastpage

702

Abstract

This paper describes the fabrication and testing of a one-axis polymer-based capacitive accelerometer made using a reel-to-reel/roll-to-roll compatible, printing-based process. The accelerometer is a suspended parallel-plate sense capacitor made from a laser-printed polystyrene composite material on a flexible plastic substrate. With a simple analog voltage readout circuit, device sensitivity is 58mV/g with +/-1.5g range. This device demonstrates fabrication of ultra-low-cost MEMS sensors on flexible polymer substrates.

Keywords

accelerometers; capacitive sensors; capacitors; composite materials; microfabrication; microsensors; plastics; polymers; analog voltage readout circuit; flexible plastic substrate; flexible polymer substrate; laser-printed polystyrene composite material; one-axis polymer-based capacitive accelerometer; parallel-plate sense capacitor; reel-to-reel-roll-to-roll compatible printing-based process; ultra-low-cost MEMS sensor fabrication; Acceleration; Accelerometers; Capacitance; Fabrication; Gold; Micromechanical devices; Substrates; Reel to reel; accelerometer; large area; plastic; polymer; roll to roll;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International

Conference_Location

Beijing

ISSN

Pending

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0157-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TRANSDUCERS.2011.5969203

Filename

5969203