Making a Capacitive Accelerometer EE147/247A Fall 2016 Week 2, Lecture 1 K. Pister
Outline Simple SOI process Simple capacitive accelerometer Performance Etching Design rules Simple capacitive accelerometer Anchor, spring, mass, capacitor Performance Spring constant, mass, frequency response Capacitance vs. acceleration
Simple SOI process Start with 20um thick SOI on 2um SiO2 spin, expose, develop, hardbake photoresist with mask STRUCT DRIE (deep reactive ion etch) silicon etch (plasma) strip photoresist 5 minute etch in 49% HF (liquid) rinse, dry
Minimum size for an anchor?
Maximum width of a free beam?
Maximum distance between etch holes in a free plate?
Design Rules: example minimum line/space: 2um etch hole size: 2um square etch hole spacing: 6um center-to-center minimum width, fixed beam: 20um max width, free beam: 8um
Design Rules Design rules are a contract between the manufacturer and the designer “obey these rules and we guarantee this level of performance” free beams will be free fixed beams will be fixed 2um lines (e.g. springs) will still be there 2um gaps (e.g. capacitors) will be cleared
Design rules, cont. Note that this does not guarantee that a 2um line will be 2um wide when it is fabbed Design rules are a good idea even when you are both the designer and the manufacturer (maybe “especially when”)
Simplest accelerometer
ST 3 axis accelerometer LIS44AHL https://memsblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/chipworks-2/
ST 3 axis accelerometer LIS44AHL https://memsblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/chipworks-2/
Possibly the ST LIS331EB? (probably not) Moving mass (with etch holes) Spring Capacitor fingers? Anchor http://www.pcbheaven.com/opendir/index.php?show=4109sg7239pu0d6729c0
MEMS racetrack and racecar Pham, Dao, Sugiyama, “A micro transportation system […] J. Micromech. Microeng. 2007 http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0960-1317/17/10/026/pdf
Spring, mass, damper, capacitor
Spring
Mass
Capacitor