Design and fabrication of submicrometer, single crystal Si accelerometer

A lateral accelerometer has been designed, simulated, and fabricated using a 3-mask high-aspect ratio technology. Electron beam lithography and high-density plasma etching in an inductively coupled plasma source enabled aspect ratios >30 to be achieved. This makes possible beams with very small spring constants. Combining the ability to measure very small displacement of a proof mass due to narrow capacitive gaps between comb fingers, a highly sensitive accelerometer can be obtained. The fabricated accelerometer with 1 /spl mu/m beams and 0.2 /spl mu/m comb gaps had a spring constant of 0.127 N/m, which is close to the calculated values of 0.146 N/m. Based on the capacitance measurements, the accelerometer sensitivity is calculated to be 6.3 fF/g. Reducing the beam width to 0.4 /spl mu/m lowered the spring constant to 0.03 N/m, and an improved equivalent sensitivity of 79.2 fF/g is calculated. The minimum detectable acceleration is on the order of a few microgravity over a range of hundreds of gravities.