Design and fabrication of an in-plane SOI MEMS accelerometer with a high yield rate

This paper presents a SOI based capacitive accelerometer using a backside dry release process. In order to increase the yield rate of the backside dry release process, the deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process was improved by using a grooved accompany sheet. Using this method, the yield rate of the accelerometer was improved to 64.2% from19.2%. Test results show that sensitivity of the accelerometer is 3.5V/g.