Micromachined High-Aspect-Ratio Parylene Spring and Its Application to Low-Frequency Accelerometers

Author

Suzuki, Yuji ; Tai, Yu-Chong

Volume

15

Issue

5

fYear

2006

fDate

10/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1364

Lastpage

1370

Abstract

A new microfabrication technology for high-aspect- ratio parylene structure has been developed for soft spring applications. Free-standing parylene beams with widths of 10–40 $\\mu m$ and aspect ratios of 10–20 have been successfully fabricated. Since parylene has a small Young\´s modulus, a high-aspect-ratio beam with a spring constant of the order of $1,\\times, 10 ^-3~ N/ m$ has been realized. The large yield strain of parylene enables a test structure to have a large-amplitude oscillation of 600 $\\mu m_{p \\mathchar$ , without any failure of the high-aspect-ratio springs. An early prototype of in-plane capacitive accelerometer was also developed. It was found that its resonant frequency is as low as 37 Hz, and the noise spectral density is 64 $\\mu g/( Hz)^0.5$ .1606

Keywords

Capacitive accelerometer; high-aspect-ratio beam; low spring constant; parylene; Accelerometers; Atomic force microscopy; Capacitive sensors; Crystalline materials; Internal stresses; Polymers; Prototypes; Springs; Testing; Transducers; Capacitive accelerometer; high-aspect-ratio beam; low spring constant; parylene;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1057-7157

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JMEMS.2006.879706

Filename

1707796