Design and Fabrication of an Out of Plane Micro-Inertial Sensor

The function of a micro accelerometer depends on several performance parameters such as resolution, sensitivity and noise level. This paper presents design and fabrication of an optimized micro-machined out of plane capacitive accelerometer. The accelerometer consists of a proof mass and four folded beams fabricated on a 100 μm thick single crystal silicon (SCS) substrate using high aspect ratio reactive ion etching (RIE) process. The optimization process is carried out by the use of non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) by considering performance requirements and manufacturing process limitations, such as mask printing resolution and minimum feasible feature size in RIE process. The optimization process will present a Pareto optimal front by a set of optimal designs. In order to achieve a design with maximum conformity with the read out circuit requirements, a trade off should be made between solutions. So the limits for the electrical circuit can be changed without any new optimization process.

Design and Fabrication of an Out of Plane Micro-Inertial Sensor Keywords:

MEMS sensor , Optimization , Pareto front , Performance parameter , Trade off