Very thin packaging of capped MEMS accelerometer device

Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) has been a major supplier of accelerometer devices in hermetic packages used for crash detection and vehicle dynamic control in the automotive industry. A major market pull from the handheld customers makes it imperative to develop thin plastic packaging solution for MEMS accelerometer. This paper details the backgrinding process developed to successfully thin the wafer-level-capped MEMS accelerometer. Functionality is maintained after packaging the thinned device, a significant effect in performance is observed. Three packaging solutions are evaluated to produce a 4/spl times/4/spl times/1 mm/sup 3/ leadframe chip scale package (LFCSP). The performance of the thinned accelerometer device using the thin packaging options is compared. Assembly issues of the thin packages are also discussed.