Encapsulated submillimeter piezoresistive accelerometers

Author

Park, Woo-Tae ; Partridge, Aaron ; Candler, Rob N. ; Ayanoor-Vitikkate, Vipin ; Yama, Gary ; Lutz, Markus ; Kenny, Thomas W.

Author_Institution

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

Volume

15

Issue

3

fYear

2006

fDate

6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

507

Lastpage

514

Abstract

While micromachined accelerometers are widely available and used in various applications, some biomedical applications require extremely small dimensions (3) ever published. We achieve miniaturization by using a film encapsulation technique with a thick epitaxial polysilicon layer. This packaging technique enables the dimensions of the die to be only tens of microns larger than the micromechanical structure. We have fabricated accelerometers as small as 0.034mm³ (387μm×387 μm×230μm) with noise floor of 0.25mg/√Hz. These ultra-miniature motion sensors have potential opening up new frontiers in biomedical science and engineering.

Keywords

accelerometers; encapsulation; microsensors; piezoresistive devices; film encapsulation; miniaturization; noise floor; submillimeter piezoresistive accelerometers; thick epitaxial polysilicon layer; ultra miniature motion sensors; Acceleration; Accelerometers; Biomedical measurements; Biosensors; In vivo; Mechanical engineering; Micromechanical devices; Packaging; Piezoresistance; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Accelerometer; piezoresistive; ultraminiature sensors; wafer level packaging;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1057-7157

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JMEMS.2006.876648

Filename

1638476