High-Sensitivity, Low-Noise MEMS Accelerometer

A high-sensitivity and low-noise MEMS accelerometer was developed using multi-layer metal structures composed of multiple metal layers. The accelerometer achieves 1 μG level resolution that has been a challenging task with conventional MEMS technology. The team previously proposed a method of using gold material to downscale the proof mass size of MEMS accelerometers to less than one-tenth. In this work, they have increased the proof mass per area by employing multiple layers of gold for the MEMS structures, thereby increasing the sensitivity over 100 times and reducing noise less than one-tenth when compared with conventional accelerometers.