A Gold Proof-Mass Differential MEMS Accelerometer for Micro-G Level Sensing

Abstract

This paper reports a gold proof-mass MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) accelerometer with differential electrodes to achieve higher sensitivity (Sm) for micro-G level (G = 9.8 m/s2) sensing. To reduce Brownian noise (BN), we employ gold material as the high-density proof mass. The gold proof-mass differential MEMS accelerometer is fabricated by the multi-layer metal technology. The actual BN and Sm of our device within 4 × 4 mm2 are experimentally obtained to be 154 nG/√Hz, 3.1 pF/G, respectively. The experimental results confirm that the proposed gold proof-mass differential sensing structure would be useful to realize micro-G level sensing.