NEMS accelerometers with nanoscale sensing elements

This paper presents design, fabrication and characterization of three types of ultra miniature novel 3-axis accelerometers with nanoscale piezoresistive sensing elements and read out circuits. These sensors consist of sub-millimeter structures with seismic masses and developed using MEMS/NEMS machining and fabrication techniques. It can detect three components of linear acceleration simultaneously. The sensitivity could be enhanced significantly while miniaturizing the die size of sensor chip with aid of novel structures and nanoscale piezoresistors on the sensing beams. Therefore, these novel proposed sensors are showing good performance and smaller than other comparable miniaturized sensor structures reported thus far.