A micromachined fully differential lateral accelerometer

A monolithic surface micromachined lateral accelerometer with on-chip A/D converter is described. The device features a fully differential capacitive interface between the sensing element and on-chip electronics to minimize the systematic offset and errors due to switch charge injection. The common centroid layout of the sensor interface reduces cross-axis sensitivity and susceptibility to angular accelerations. The measured noise-floor of the device is 500 /spl mu/g//spl radic/(Hz) and the fullscale range is /spl plusmn/3.5 g(1 g=9.8m/sec/sup 2/).