A novel three-axis thermal accelerometer is designed, fabricated, and characterized in this paper. The device includes two half sensor plates attached to buckled cantilevers to form out-of-plane structures. Cantilevers are assembled by a single push of a microprobe and preserve their shapes when they latch into stoppers anchored to the substrate. The fabrication process is based on surface micromachining on silicon substrates using polyimide as the structural layer and amorphous silicon as the sacrificial layer. The fabricated devices are individually packaged and characterized. Using a total heater power of 2.5 mW, the X, Y, and Z axes, respectively, showed sensitivities of 66, 64, and 25 µV g−1. Compared to the earlier versions of the same class accelerometers, the fabricated single heater accelerometer demonstrates more than fourfold sensitivity improvement.

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