Microsyst Technol (2012) 18:325332
DOI 10.1007/s00542-011-1393-9
TECHNICAL PAPER
A three-axis SOI accelerometer sensing with both in-plane
and vertical comb electrodes
Jin Xie Rahul Agarwal Youhe Liu
Julius Minglin Tsai
Received: 10 September 2011 / Accepted: 1 December 2011 / Published online: 15 December 2011
Springer-Verlag 2011
Abstract A three-axis capacitive accelerometer based on
silicon-on-insulator is designed and fabricated. In the
accelerometer, totally eight groups of capacitors are com-
pactly arranged around an octagonal proof mass. The four
groups of capacitors along orthogonal direction with
in-plane comb electrodes detect XY acceleration, while the
other four groups of capacitors along diagonal direction with
vertical comb electrodes detect Z acceleration. Measure-
ments of in-plane and vertical motion by the respective
in-plane and vertical comb electrodes enable direct detection
for all the three axes with differential capacitive sensing
scheme. For the fabricated accelerometer in the size of
4 9 4 mm2, the capacitance sensitivities of in-plane and out-
of-plane accelerometers are 145.3 and 9.1 fF/g, respectively.
1 Introduction
Compared to piezoelectric and thermal accelerometers,
capacitive accelerometers are more popular for applications
on automotive and consumer electronics due to their high
sensitivity, good temperature performance, low cost and
easy integration with CMOS (Xie et al. 2008). Accelerom-
eters based on bulk micromachining, especially on silicon-
on-insulator (SOI) wafers, have been widely developed
(Brosnihan et al. 1997; Chen et al. 2005; Xie et al. 2011;
J. Xie  R. Agarwal  Y. Liu  J. M. Tsai
Institute of Microelectronics, A*STAR (Agency for Science,
Technology and Research), 11 Science Park Road,
Singapore 117685, Singapore
J. Xie (&)
Mechanical Engineering Department, Berkeley Sensor and
Actuator Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
e-mail: jinxie@berkeley.edu; xiejin@hotmail.com
Dong et al. 2005). The use of SOI wafers in implementing
capacitive accelerometers has various advantages such as
superior material properties of a single crystal material,
easily achieved high-aspect-ratio microstructures, good
mechanical stability, less residual stress and simple fabri-
cation processes. Meanwhile, accelerometers based on thick
SOI substrate have heavy proof mass and thus low Brownian
noise floor. Interdigitated in-plane comb electrodes are
mostly used to detect in-plane acceleration. For out-of-plane
accelerometer, it remains a challenge to realize Z-axis dif-
ferential capacitive electrodes for monolithic integration of
three-axis accelerometer on the SOI wafer. Matsumoto et al.
(1999) demonstrated an SOI three-axis capacitive acceler-
ometer, in which the whole handle layer was used as the
bottom electrode of the Z accelerometer, but the handle layer
also formed an unwanted capacitor with the in-plane comb
fingers, which caused large parasitic capacitance. Further-
more, the differential capacitive sensing was not available in
their Z-axis accelerometer. Hsu et al. (2009) presented a SOI
Z-axis differential capacitive accelerometer, where the small
sensing gap between the capacitor plates of device layer and
handle layer was created by removing buried oxide of SOI
wafer. The electrical interconnection was realized by man-
ually dispensing silver paste between device and handle
silicon layers, which made the design difficult to be applied
in batch fabrication. Hsu et al. (2010) fabricated a silicon-on-
glass (SOG) three-axis accelerometer, in which the authors
integrated in-plane and out-of-plane accelerometers into a
single sensing structure to achieve small size, and made the
unbalanced proof mass as the outer frame of the in-plane
accelerometers to enhance the output of Z-axis sensing.
Vertical comb electrodes, which are composed of high and
low comb fingers, were utilized to detect Z-axis acceleration
on SOI wafer with differential capacitive scheme by Tsuchiya
and Funabashi (2004) and Hamaguchi et al. (2007). But in
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their three-axis accelerometers, both the out-of-plane and
in-plane motions were detected by the same group of
vertical comb electrodes, so the sensitivity must be
decoupled for each of the three axes, and consequently the
capacitive sensitivities for all the three axes were reduced.
In this paper, we presents an improved three-axis
capacitive SOI accelerometer which detects acceleration
with both in-plane and vertical comb electrodes. In the
accelerometer, totally eight groups of capacitors are
compactly arranged around an octagonal proof mass.
XY acceleration is detected by the four groups of capacitors
along orthogonal direction with in-plane comb electrodes,
while Z acceleration is detected by the other four groups of
capacitors with vertical comb electrodes. In-plane and out-
of-plane accelerations are measured by the respective in-
plane and vertical comb electrodes, which enables direct
detection for all the three axes with differential capacitive
sensing scheme and thus high sensitivity.
2 Design and simulation
The presented SOI accelerometer consists of two pairs of
folded springs with a common octagonal proof mass in the
center, as shown in Fig 1. There are totally eight groups of
capacitors connected with the octagonal proof mass. The
four groups of capacitors (Cx1 , Cx2 , Cy1 and Cy2 ) along
orthogonal direction are in-plane comb electrodes and
detect XY acceleration. Cx1 and Cx2 are one pair of differ-
ential capacitors for X accelerometer, and Cy1 and Cy2 the
other pair of differential capacitors for Y accelerometer. To
achieve high capacitive sensitivity, the gap between moving
Fig. 1 Schematic view of the
presented three-axis
accelerometer
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Microsyst Technol (2012) 18:325332
comb and stationary comb is not even (d1 6 d2 ) in the
in-plane comb electrodes. The other four groups of capacitors
(CA , CB , CC and CD ) along diagonal direction are vertical
comb electrodes and detect Z acceleration. To realize dif-
ferential capacitive sensing scheme in Z-axis, in CA and CB ,
the moving electrodes are lower than the stationary elec-
trodes, while in CC and CD , the moving electrodes are
higher. Different from the designs by Tsuchiya and Fun-
abashi (2004) and Hamaguchi et al. (2007), the vertical
comb electrodes of the presented accelerometer have even
gaps (d0 ) between the moving and stationary fingers, which
helps minimize zero-g offset when modulation voltage is
applied to the capacitors.
For a capacitor plate, the capacitance and its change
against small displacement are written as:
lh h l lh
Ce ; DC e Dl e Dh  e 2 Dd 1
d d d d
where e is dielectric constant, and l, h and d are length,
height and gap of electrode, respectively. The capacitance
changes of XY in-plane accelerometer are derived as:
 
1 1
DCx Cx1  Cx2 DCx1  DCx2 2elh 2  2 Dx
d1 d2
2
 
1 1
DCy Cy1  Cy2 DCy1  DCy2 2elh  Dy
d12 d22
3
Z-axis acceleration is measured by vertical comb electrodes
in differential scheme by decomposing capacitance of CA , CB ,
Microsyst Technol (2012) 18:325332 327

CC and CD . For convenient discussion, we consider ab DCC DCD 0 9

coordinate system, which is 45o apart from XY coordinate
system. When the displacement is along positive direction When the proof mass vibrates in both positive and
of abZ axes, we have the following equations negative directions, capacitance change is only determined
(Hamaguchi et al. 2007): by displacement along Z-axis, as shown in the following
equations:
lh lh l
DCA e 2
Da  e 2 Da 0 4 DCz CA CB  CC CD 4e Dz 10
d0 d0 d0
lh lh
DCB e 2
Da  e 2 Da 0 5 As indicated in the Equations of (2), (3) and (10), DCx ,
d0 d0
DCy and DCz only rely on the displacements of Dx, Dy and
l lh l lh Dz, so there is ideally no cross-sensitivity between each
DCC e Dz  e 2 Db e Dz  e 2 Db
d0 d0 d0 d0 two axes.
l The finite element analysis (FEA) was done in Coven-
2e Dz 6 torWare 2010, and the finite element models are shown in
d0
Fig. 2. To avoid extremely long simulation time, the per-
l lh l lh forating holes in the proof mass are ignored in the model,
DCD e Dz  e 2 Db e Dz  e 2 Db
d0 d0 d0 d0 and the weight of proof mass is compensated through
l changing the density of proof mass. The design parameters
2e Dz 7
d0 and simulated results are summarized in Table 1. In the
presented accelerometer, squeeze damping is dominant
Similarly, if the displacement is along the negative
over the slide-film damping. For in-plane motion, the
direction, we have
squeeze damping occurs when the movable electrodes
l moves towards the stationary electrodes, while for out-of-
DCA DCB 2e Dz 8
d0 plane motion, the squeeze damping is from the gap change

Fig. 2 FEA models for a accelerometer b in-plane and c, d vertical electrodes

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Table 1 Design parameters and simulated results of the accelerometer Mx0

Q 11
Parameter X and Y axes Z-axis D
1
Sensing area (mm) 494 f 12
2Q
Proof mass weight (kg) 3.1 9 10-7
Spring constant (N/m) 20.6 39.1 where Q is quality factor, M is the proof mass, D is the
Resonant frequency (Hz) 1,189 1,635 damping coefficient, f is the damping ratio, the quality
Electrode height (lm) 50 50/25 factor Q for in-plane vibration is 0.45 and damping ratio f
Electrode length (lm) 160 is 1.1, which means that the in-plane vibration is over
Electrode gap (lm) 2/5 3.5 damped. With the same simulation procedure, the damping
No. of electrodes 140 320 ratio f for the out-of-plane accelerometer is 0.9, which
Static capacitance (pF) 5.9 3.2 means that the out-of-plane vibration is also over damped.
Capacitance sensitivity (fF/g) 160.0 12.0
Damping ratio 1.1 0.9
3 Fabrication

The accelerometer is fabricated in a SOI wafer with 50 lm

between the proof mass and the substrate. The simulation
of damping is conducted in the Damping MM solver of
CoventorWare 2010. For each pair of comb fingers in in-
plane electrodes, damping coefficient is 2.97 9 10-5.
Totally there are 140 pairs of in-plane comb fingers, so the
squeeze damping coefficient caused by in-plane motion is
4.17 9 10-3. The squeeze damping from the 320 pairs of
vertical comb electrodes is 0.84 9 10-3. According to the
following equations:
thick device layer, and the process flow is shown in Fig. 3.
The SOI is p-type boron doped with resistivity of
0.01 X cm. Firstly, 0.7 lm aluminium is deposited by
sputtering and patterned as pads for wire bonding. Sec-
ondly, 1 lm SiO2 is deposited by plasma-enhanced
chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and patterned as hard
mask to define the structure, and 4 lm thick photoresist is
used as the second mask to form the vertical comb elec-
trodes with self-alignment technology, as shown in steps 3
and 4. In the first deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE), the

Fig. 3 Fabrication process flow

for the accelerometer with
vertical electrodes

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silicon etching depth is 25 lm. After photoresist stripping,
the second DRIE is done to etch the remaining 25 lm
silicon. Finally, the device is released in vapor hydrofluoric
acid (HF). Different from buffered hydrofluoric acid (BHF)
wet etchant, vapor HF does not attack aluminum pads, and
the structures are released without stiction.
The fabricated accelerometer in the size of 4 9 4 mm2
is shown in Fig. 4. The proof mass, springs, in-plane combs
and vertical combs were successfully fabricated. In the
vertical comb electrodes, the lower electrodes are shown
with very shallow gray color because they are out of focus
by 25 lm when observed in optical microscope. The
Fig. 4 The fabricated three-axis accelerometer
Fig. 6 Vertical electrodes in the fabricated accelerometer
329
octagonal proof mass is located in the center, and sensing
capacitors and springs are arranged around each side of the
proof mass: four groups of in-plane electrodes, as well as
four pairs of spring are along the orthogonal direction, and
four groups of vertical electrodes along the triangle direction.
The released proof mass is shown in Fig. 5. Figure 6 shows
the cross section of the vertical electrodes. The cross sec-
tion is obtained by cutting a normal silicon wafer, which is
processed with the same conditions as SOI wafer. The
higher electrode is 50 lm while the lower electrode is
25 lm. The sidewall of the electrode is not perfectly
vertical, which makes the gap not uniform. The reason is
that after second step of DRIE, one more cycle of isotropic
etching is added to remove needle-like residue at the edges
of the lower height electrodes, as shown in Fig. 7. The
needle-like residue in the vertical electrodes may have been
caused in the following process: the sidewall formed by the
first DRIE is quickly passivated at the beginning of the
Fig. 5 Device on SOI wafer is successfully released in vapor HF
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second DRIE; these passivation reagents may act as the
mask for second DRIE, which causes the formation of
needle-shaped residue (Tsuchiya and Funabashi 2004). To
remove the needle-like residue, one more cycle of isotropic
etching is added after second DRIE. However, the extra
cycle of isotropic etching causes silicon loss of the lower
electrodes, which makes the top side of the electrode a little
smaller than the bottom side, as shown in Fig. 6b, and
results in a reduced sensitivity.
4 Testing
The block diagram of testing setup for characterization of
the fabricated accelerometer is shown in Fig. 8. A shaker,
a function generator and a power amplifier are used to
provide a base motion to excite the packaged accelerometer.
Fig. 7 Needle-like residue in the vertical electrodes
Fig. 9 Accelerometer under
testing, capacitive readout IC
and commercial reference
accelerometer
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Microsyst Technol (2012) 18:325332
The capacitive signal from the accelerometer under testing
is converted to voltage by using a commercial universal
capacitive readout IC (MS3110 by Irvine Sensors Cor-
poration, USA), which has a low capacitive noise of
p
4aF Hz. The input acceleration is monitored by a ref-
erence commercial accelerometer (ADI ADXL335), which
is mounted together with the accelerometer under testing,
as shown in Fig. 9. The output voltage in the time domain
is displaced and recorded by an oscilloscope, and the fre-
quency response is measured by a dynamic system ana-
lyzer. In the range of 3 g, the sensitivity is 290.6 mV/g
for the in-plane axis (X or Y), while only 18.2 mV/g for the
out-of-plane axis (Z), as shown in Fig. 10. With 2 V/pF
gain of the MS3110 readout IC, we know that the capaci-
tance sensitivities for in-plane and out-of-plane acceler-
ometer are 145.3 and 9.1 fF/g, respectively. Due to silicon
undercut by DRIE, the actual gap of the comb fingers is
larger than the values used in simulation, which makes the
measured sensitivity lower than the simulated value.
However, compared with the sensitivity of Z-axis reported
in the previously published works, i.e. 1.14 (Tsuchiya and
Funabashi 2004) and 1.3 fF/g (Hamaguchi et al. 2007), the
Fig. 8 Block diagram of the test setup
Microsyst Technol (2012) 18:325332
Fig. 10 Sensitivity of the fabricated three-axis accelerometer
Fig. 11 Frequency response for the fabricated accelerometer
Z-axis sensitivity of the presented accelerometer has
been greatly improved. The nonlinearity, which is defined
as the ratio of the maximum deviation from the best fit
331
Table 2 The measured performance of the fabricated accelerometer
Parameter In-plane Out-of-plane
axes (X or Y) axis (Z)
Resonant frequency (Hz) 1,160 1,676
Bandwidth (Hz) 60 80
Voltage sensitivity (mV/g) 290.6 18.2
Capacitance sensitivity (fF/g) 145.3 9.1
Static sensing capacitance (pF) 5.5 2.7
Nonlinearity (%) 0.5 2.3
line to the full scale output, is measured as 0.5% for the in-
plane accelerometer, and 2.3% for the out-of-plane
accelerometer. The large nonlinearity of out-of-plane
accelerometer is down to the poor profile of the vertical
electrodes. The frequency response is measured by
sweeping sine signal from 10 to 3,000 Hz, as presented in
Fig. 11. The resonant frequency for the in-plane acceler-
ometer is 1,160 Hz, and for the out-of-plane accelerometer
1,676 Hz. Both the measured resonant frequencies are
lower than the simulation results. The possible reason is
the undercut during the DRIE etching which reduces the
spring constant. With the roll-off frequency set in the low
pass filter of the readout IC, the -3 dB frequency occurs at
60 Hz for in-plane accelerometer and 80 Hz for out-of-
plane accelerometer. Table 2 summarizes the measured
performance for the fabricated accelerometer.
5 Conclusions
A differential capacitive three-axis SOI accelerometer is
designed and fabricated. The proof mass of the presented
accelerometer is octagonal shape, and eight groups of
capacitors are arranged around each side of the proof mass
to achieve a compact design. XY acceleration is detected by
four groups of in-plane comb electrodes along orthogonal
direction, while Z acceleration is detected by the other four
groups of vertical comb electrodes along the triangle
direction. The vertical comb electrodes are fabricated by
micromachining with double layer masks with time-
controlled DRIE process to realize different heights of the
comb fingers. Differential capacitive sensing scheme of all
the three axes allows us to accurately measure linear
capacitance change against input acceleration. The size of
the fabricated accelerometer is 4 9 4 mm2 and the mea-
sured sensitivities of in-plane axis and out-of-plane axis are
145.3 and 9.1 fF/g, respectively.
Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Pavel Neuzil
for his support on layout of mask.
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