Miniaturization limits of piezoresistive MEMS accelerometers

Engesser, Manuel; Franke, Axel R.; Maute, Matthias; Meisel, Daniel C.; Korvink, Jan G.

doi:10.1007/s00542-009-0920-4

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The desired properties of microaccelerometers include high sensitivity, maximum operating range, wide frequency response, high resolution, good linearity, low offset, shock survival ability and low cross-axis sensitivity. There are several mechanisms for acceleration sensing such as piezoresistive (Roylance and Angell 1979;Allen et al 1989;Tschan et al 1991;Riethmuller et al 1992;Burrer et al 1994;Kim et al 1995;Chen et al 1997;Takao and Matsumoto 1998;Plaza et al 1998;Kwon and Park 1998;Patridge et al 2000;Huang et al 2005;Park et al 2006;Amarasinghe et al 2005;Kal et al 2006;Eklund and Shkel 2007;Dong et al 2008;Engesser et al 2009;Ravi Sankar et al 2009a, b), piezoelectric (Kobayashi et al 2010), capacitive (Hsu et al 2009;Farahani et al 2009;Ravi Sankar et al 2011), tunneling (Hsien et al 1998), etc. Each of the above acceleration sensing mechanisms has its own merits and demerits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Design, fabrication and testing of a high performance silicon piezoresistive Z-axis accelerometer with proof mass-edge-aligned-flexures

2011

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This paper presents design, fabrication and testing of a quad beam silicon piezoresistive Z-axis accelerometer with very low cross-axis sensitivity. The accelerometer device proposed in the present work consists of a thick proof mass supported by four thin beams (also called as flexures) that are connected to an outer supporting rim. Cross-axis sensitivity in piezoresistive accelerometers is an important issue particularly for high performance applications. In the present study, low cross-axis sensitivity is achieved by improving the device stability by placing the four flexures in line with the proof mass edges. Various modules of a finite element method based software called CoventorWare TM was used for design optimization. Based on the simulation results, a flexure thickness of 30 lm and a diffused resistor doping concentration of 5 9 10 18 atoms/cm 3 were fixed to achieve a high prime-axis sensitivity of 122 lV/Vg, low cross-axis sensitivity of 27 ppm and a relatively higher bandwidth of 2.89 kHz. The designed accelerometer was realized by a complementary metal oxide semiconductor compatible bulk micromachining process using a dual doped tetra methyl ammonium hydroxide etching solution. The fabricated accelerometer devices were tested up to 13 g static acceleration using a rate table. Test results of fabricated devices with 30 lm flexure thickness show an average prime axis sensitivity of 111 lV/Vg with very low cross-axis sensitivities of 0.652 and 0.688 lV/Vg along X-axis and Y-axis, respectively.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Design, fabrication and testing of a high performance silicon piezoresistive Z-axis accelerometer with proof mass-edge-aligned-flexures

2011

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“…However, we could not discover any commercially available moving-gate accelerometers. Engesser et al (2009) presents the miniaturization limits of piezoresistive MEMS accelerometers, which use another alternative transducer principle.…”

Section: State Of the Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Miniaturization limits of field-effect based MEMS accelerometers

et al. 2010

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Accelerometers are increasingly gaining in importance in the consumer electronics sector. To estimate whether field-effect based accelerometers have an advantage over sensor types common today, we analyze their scaling performance in this paper. Within the scope of this research, firstly we create an analytical model and subsequently verify it by numerical simulation. Based thereon, a numerical-analytical study of the scaling performance follows. The requirements are based on a commercially available capacitive accelerometer. We identify the main miniaturization limits of field-effect based accelerometers, which are total noise and pull-in effect. Those limits lead to a total area estimation for a triaxial MEMS accelerometer core of only 410 lm 9 300 lm.

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“…An analytical model of a piezoresistive MEMS accelerometer can be found in Engesser et al (2009). Compared to the capacitive case, the piezoresistive case is characterized by an additional nonlinear parameter (doping density) and a higher number of constraints.…”

Section: Piezoresistive Complex Model With Highly Nonlinear Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A robust and flexible optimization technique for efficient shrinking of MEMS accelerometers

et al. 2009

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We report on the automated determination of the minimal required area of a MEMS accelerometer conforming to given specifications. For a realistic nonlinear sensor model this process is only possible by the use of numerical optimization, which typically has the difficulty of finding the global minimum or is time consuming. A miniaturized sensor's chip size reduces manufacturing cost and leads to more competitive package sizes and new, unforeseen applications. Size reduction is especially important for consumer applications like mobile phones and navigation devices, where an increasing demand for accelerometers is expected in the near future. With further miniaturization of a sensor it is increasingly important to find the optimal design in order to use chip area as efficiently as possible. To achieve a robust and flexible automated area reduction without loss of functionality we uniquely combine available genetic and gradient-based optimization algorithms. Furthermore, we reduce the model complexity, apply different scaling techniques and adapt optimization algorithm settings. The application to a capacitive and a piezoresistive MEMS accelerometer shows significant improvement of efficiency when compared with the use of currently available optimization algorithms.

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Miniaturization limits of piezoresistive MEMS accelerometers

Cited by 22 publications

References 27 publications

Design, fabrication and testing of a high performance silicon piezoresistive Z-axis accelerometer with proof mass-edge-aligned-flexures

Design, fabrication and testing of a high performance silicon piezoresistive Z-axis accelerometer with proof mass-edge-aligned-flexures

Miniaturization limits of field-effect based MEMS accelerometers

A robust and flexible optimization technique for efficient shrinking of MEMS accelerometers

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