Integrated MEMS Inertial Measurement Unit
     
    Our goals include:
  • to develop a monolithic Integrated-MEMS Inertial Measurement Unit (IM2U) that exploits IM CAD tools to achieve superior system performance over individual microdevices
  • to drive development of IM CAD tools and demonstrate their ability for very large-scale IM design
  • to develop methodologies and tools for back-end verification of IMs to guarantee first pass success in fabrication.

Some Research Results:

  • Inductively Coupled Plasma Release of CMOS-MEMS structures
    icp based release of cmos mems The Aluminium metallization mask in a CMOS process is used to define a MEMS structure that is released using deep reactive ion etching followed by an isotropic silicon etch. In the example device, the MEMS structure is suspended 50 um above the substrate. This process relaxes the design rule requirements for integrating MEMS transducers with CMOS electronics, allowing tighter integration of M EMS and CMOS.

    Xu Zhu, David W. Greve and Gary K. Fedder, Characterization of Silicon Isotropic Etch by Inductively Coupled Plasma Etch in Post-CMOS Processing, in The 13th Annual International Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Conference Miyazaki, Japan, Jan 23-27, 2000, pp. 568-573. Abstract

  • 1mG/rtHz CMOS-MEMS Lateral Accelerometer
    cmos mems lateral accelerometer The accelerometer is fabricated in a CMOS process enabling integration of the transducer with the capacitive sensing differential amplifier .
    Post-CMOS micromachining is used to create the transducer structure.

    Hao Luo, Gary K. Fedder and L. Richard Carley, A 1 mG Lateral CMOS-MEMS Accelerometer, in The 13th Annual International Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Conference Miyazaki, Japan, Jan 23-27, 2000, pp. 502-507. Abstract

  • CMOS-MEMS Vertical Accelerometer
    cmos mems vertical accelerometer The accelerometer uses the sidewall capacitance between the comb fingers to sense vertical acceleration. It is fabricated in a CMOS process and uses the multi-layer metalization in the CMOS process to transduce z-acceleration into a change in sidewall capacitance.

    Huikai Xie and Gary K. Fedder, A CMOS Z-Axis Capacitive Accelerometer With Comb-Finger Sensing, in The 13th Annual International Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Conference Miyazaki, Japan, Jan 23-27, 2000, pp. 496-501. Abstract

  • Layout Extraction Tools for MEMS

Principal Investigators:

  • Prof. Gary Fedder
  • Prof. Rick Carley
  • Dr. Tamal Mukherjee