TY - GEN
T1 - Researches of a novel 2D CMOS thermal based accelerometer
AU - Shen, Chih Hsiung
AU - Chen, Shu Jung
AU - Yang, Yin Ting
PY - 2008/1/1
Y1 - 2008/1/1
N2 - Conventionally the accelerometer behaves like a spring - mass system and its structures involve solid proof mass, which is allowed to move under acceleration conditions. In this paper, we design and fabrication a novel thermal-bubble-based micromachined accelerometer with advantages of minimum solid thermal conductance and high sensitivity successfully. The proposed accelerometer based on thermal convection creates a tiny heated air bubble hermetically sealed inside the sensor package cavity. Four thermopiles around the center heater serve as the temperature sensors to detect two-dimension motion of the chip and also are adequately applied to the technology of inclinometers, anemometers and flow meters. A new micro-link structure is also proposed to enhance the construction of accelerometer with the micro heater and two pairs of thermopiles floating over an etched cavity. The heater and the thermopiles are connected by network-like structure of micro-links, which enhance the structure and greatly reduce the solid heat flow from the heater to the hot junctions of thermopiles. The samples are fabricated by TSMC 0.35μm 2P4M CMOS process which is provided by CIC with outstanding strong structures and uniform quality. Our design is proved to be adequate for commercial batch production. We measure the output signal by inclining the sensor to evaluate the performance of this accelerometer.
AB - Conventionally the accelerometer behaves like a spring - mass system and its structures involve solid proof mass, which is allowed to move under acceleration conditions. In this paper, we design and fabrication a novel thermal-bubble-based micromachined accelerometer with advantages of minimum solid thermal conductance and high sensitivity successfully. The proposed accelerometer based on thermal convection creates a tiny heated air bubble hermetically sealed inside the sensor package cavity. Four thermopiles around the center heater serve as the temperature sensors to detect two-dimension motion of the chip and also are adequately applied to the technology of inclinometers, anemometers and flow meters. A new micro-link structure is also proposed to enhance the construction of accelerometer with the micro heater and two pairs of thermopiles floating over an etched cavity. The heater and the thermopiles are connected by network-like structure of micro-links, which enhance the structure and greatly reduce the solid heat flow from the heater to the hot junctions of thermopiles. The samples are fabricated by TSMC 0.35μm 2P4M CMOS process which is provided by CIC with outstanding strong structures and uniform quality. Our design is proved to be adequate for commercial batch production. We measure the output signal by inclining the sensor to evaluate the performance of this accelerometer.
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:58049138306
T3 - Materials Science Forum
SP - 84
EP - 89
BT - Advanced Manufacture
PB - Trans Tech Publications Ltd
T2 - 2007 SME International Conference on Advanced Manufacture, SME ICAM 2007
Y2 - 26 November 2008 through 28 November 2008
ER -