A study on the thermal behavior of fabrication processes for micro-accelerometer by SOI wafers

The remarkable progress in technology of micro-machining fabrications over the past 30 years has promoted the development of many types of silicon micro-sensors. Mercerization of sensor is a trend of the silicon sensor development with regard to a piezo resistive silicon pressure sensor, the size of the pressure sensor diaphragm have become smaller year by year, and a micro-accelerometer with a size less than 200–300 μm has been realized. Over the past 4 or 5 years, numerical modeling of micro-sensors and micro-structures has gradually been developed as a field of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) design process. In this paper, we study some of the micro-machining processes of single crystal silicon (SCS) for the micro-accelerometer, and their subsequent processes, which might affect thermal and mechanical loads. The finite element method (FEM) has been a standard numerical modeling technique extensively utilized in structural engineering discipline for component design of micro-accelerometer. Temperature rises sufficiently low at the suspended beams. Instead, larger temperature gradient can be seen at the bottom of paddle part. The center of paddle part becomes about 5–20 °C higher than the corner of paddle and suspended beam edges.