A single crystal silicon low-g switch tolerant to impact accelerations up to 24,000 g

This paper presents a novel MEMS single-crystal silicon low-g switch surviving acceleration loads 200 times greater than its designed trigger load. In accordance with beam dynamics theory for survivability to high-g acceleration levels (on the order of 10,000-g´s), low-g (<;150 g) switches were designed, fabricated and tested. Experiments have confirmed that the fabricated devices trigger in the ranges of 60-131 g and survive acceleration impacts of 24,000 g. Results were found to be in close agreement with the dynamic simulations of the fabricated device with the same acceleration profiles.