Capacitive displacement sensor for detecting planar submicrometer motion

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a very simple displacement sensor that measures the change in the position of an object by sensing the change in capacitance due to the movement of this object in the sensor fringing electric field. Two sensor geometries with small footprints were considered and several sensor variations were built and tested. At distances of approximately 0.5 μm and 30 μm, test results demonstrated that the sensors' resolution was in the order of tens of nanometers.

Highly Miniaturized MEMS‐Based Test Platforms for Thermo‐Mechanical and Reliability Characterization of Nano‐Functional Elements − Technology and Functional Test Results

“…Displacement sensors based on the principle of differential capacitors have been proven to be sensitive and reliable . The concept uses a fixed and at least two moving electrodes attached to the actuator.…”

A portable picometer reference actuator with 100 µm range, picometer resolution, subnanometer accuracy and submicroradian tip-tilt error for the characterization of measuring instruments at the nanoscale

“…Either the devices realization or the characterization instruments, such as most performing scanning probe and electron beam microscopes (e.g. AFM-STM Asylum Chyper [22], EBL Jeol JBX-9500FS [23], TEM FEI Metrios [24]) as well as metrological positioning stages [25] will benefit from an advanced metrological traceability. Recently, in biology and proteomic a single DNA strand with a base resolution [26] (single atom scale size), has been observed, with the intent of identifying nucleotides and their spatial conformation and to relate it to the specific functional expression in wildlife.…”