A New Approach of 2D CMOS Thermal-Bubble-Based Accelerometer

A novel thermal-bubble-based micromachined accelerometer with advantages of low solid thermal conductance and high sensitivity is presented in this paper. With our proposed micro-link structure, a new accelerometer was built with a micro heater, two pairs of thermopiles which were floating over an etched cavity. The micro-heater is centered on the membrane and two pairs of thermopiles besides are crossed with each other. The heater and the thermopiles are connected by network structure of micro-links, which enhance the structure and greatly reduce the solid heat flow from the heater to the hot junctions of thermopiles. Furthermore, the samples are fabricated by TSMC 0.35 mum 2P4M CMOS process which is provided by CIC with outstanding strong structures and uniform quality. Our design is proved to be adequate for commercial batch production.