A wafer level vacuum encapsulated capacitive accelerometer fabricated in an unmodified commercial MEMS process

Adel Merdassi; Peng Yang; Vamsy P Chodavarapu

doi:10.3390/s150407349

A wafer level vacuum encapsulated capacitive accelerometer fabricated in an unmodified commercial MEMS process

Sensors (Basel). 2015 Mar 25;15(4):7349-59. doi: 10.3390/s150407349.

Authors

Adel Merdassi¹, Peng Yang², Vamsy P Chodavarapu³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, McConnell Engineering Building, 3480 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 0E9, Canada. adel.merdassi@mail.mcgill.ca.
² CMC Microsystems, 945 Princess Street, Building 50, Innovation Park at Queen's University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada. yang@cmc.ca.
³ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, McConnell Engineering Building, 3480 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 0E9, Canada. vamsy.chodavarapu@mcgill.ca.

Abstract

We present the design and fabrication of a single axis low noise accelerometer in an unmodified commercial MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) process. The new microfabrication process, MEMS Integrated Design for Inertial Sensors (MIDIS), introduced by Teledyne DALSA Inc. allows wafer level vacuum encapsulation at 10 milliTorr which provides a high Quality factor and reduces noise interference on the MEMS sensor devices. The MIDIS process is based on high aspect ratio bulk micromachining of single-crystal silicon layer that is vacuum encapsulated between two other silicon handle wafers. The process includes sealed Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) for compact design and flip-chip integration with signal processing circuits. The proposed accelerometer design is sensitive to single-axis in-plane acceleration and uses a differential capacitance measurement. Over ±1 g measurement range, the measured sensitivity was 1 fF/g. The accelerometer system was designed to provide a detection resolution of 33 milli-g over the operational range of ±100 g.