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A wafer-level vacuum packaged x and y axis gyroscope is fabricated on a (111) SOI wafer using the extended SBM (sacrificial bulk micromachining) process. The gyroscope uses vertically offset combs to resonate the proof mass in the vertical plane, and lateral combs to sense the Coriolis force in the horizontal plane. The extended SBM process is a simple two-mask process, and because all structural parts and combs are defined in one mask level, there is no misalignment in any structural parts or comb fingers. The silicon-to-glass anodic bonding carried out in low vacuum is used for the encapsulation of the fabricated gyroscope. The fabricated x and y axis gyroscope resolves 0.7 deg/sec angular rate, and the measured bandwidth is 22 Hz. The input range and the output linearity are over ± 80 deg/sec and 1.03 %FSO, respectively. The fabricated vacuum packaged x and y axis gyroscope without align error is important component at the high performance multiple-axis gyroscopes. The multiple-axis gyroscopes are used in many applications such as recently interested ubiquitous robot, car navigation, game controller, vehicle safety system, and so on.

This paper presents a microaccelerometer with wafer-level packaged MEMS sensing element with fully differential, continuous-time BiCMOS interface circuit. The MEMS sensing element is fabricated on a (1 1 1)-oriented SOI wafer by using the sacrificial bulk micromachining (SBM) process. To protect the silicon structure of the sensing element and to enhance the reliability, a wafer level hermetic packaging process is achieved, using silicon–glass anodic bonding. The fabricated sensing element gives the improved noise performance and low bias instability by the inherent high-aspect-ratio, large sacrificial gap and footing-free advantages of the SBM process. The interface circuit is fabricated using a 0.8 μm Polarfab BiCMOS process. The continuous-time, fully-differential transconductance input amplifier and the chopper-stabilization architecture is adopted to reduce low-frequency noise. The fabricated microaccelerometer has a total noise equivalent acceleration of 0.23 μg/(Hz) 1/2 , bias instability of 490 μg, input range of ±10 g, and output non-linearity of ±0.5% FSO.

A microaccelerometer with highly reliable, wafer-level packaged MEMS sensing element and fully differential, continuous time, low noise, BiCMOS interface circuit is fabricated. The MEMS sensing element is fabricated on a (111)-oriented SOI wafer by using the SBM (Sacrificial/Bulk Micromachining) process. To protect the silicon structure of the sensing element and enhance the reliability, a wafer level hermetic packaging process is performed by using a silicon-glass anodic bonding process. The interface circuit is fabricated using 0.8 µm BiCMOS process. The capacitance change of the MEMS sensing element is amplified by the continuous-time, fully-differential transconductance input amplifier. A chopper-stabilization architecture is adopted to reduce low-frequency noise including 1/f noise. The fabricated microaccelerometer has the total noise equivalent acceleration of 0.89 µg/√Hz, the bias instability of 490 µg, the input range of ±10 g, and the output nonlinearity of ±0.5 %FSO.

Single-crystal silicon planar micro-spikes with protruding barbs are developed for micro-scale biopsy and the feasibility of using the micro-spike as a micro-scale biopsy tool is evaluated for the first time. The fabrication process utilizes a deep silicon etch to define the micro-spike outline, resulting in protruding barbs of various shapes. Shanks of the fabricated micro-spikes are 3 mm long, 100 ?m thick and 250 ?m wide. Barbs protruding from micro-spike shanks facilitate the biopsy procedure by tearing off and retaining samples from target tissues. Micro-spikes with barbs successfully extracted tissue samples from the small intestines of the anesthetized pig, whereas micro-spikes without barbs failed to obtain a biopsy sample. Parylene coating can be applied to improve the biocompatibility of the micro-spike without deteriorating the biopsy function of the micro-spike. In addition, to show that the biopsy with the micro-spike can be applied to tissue analysis, samples obtained by micro-spikes were examined using immunofluorescent staining. Nuclei and F-actin of cells which are extracted by the micro-spike from a transwell were clearly visualized by immunofluorescent staining.

This paper presents (111) nano tips made using (111) single crystalline silicon. Many research efforts have reported on the fabrication methods of micro and nano tips in silicon. Most of the developed fabrication methods are based on (100) or (110) silicon. However, (111) silicon will give the sharpest {111}-bounded nano tips, and in addition, (111) silicon has the best mechanical properties compared with other types of silicon. In this paper, we use (111) silicon wafers to fabricate two type of nano tip. One type is the sharpest nano tip that can be fabricated by using only {111} silicon planes. The other type is a high aspect ratio nano tip, which is composed of one {111} plane and two vertical passivation planes. In the first case, the tip height is 5 μm and the total cone angle of the tip is 54.7°, which represents the sharpest angle for a nano tip bounded only by {111} planes on silicon. In the second case, the nano tip height is 15 μm, and the aspect ratio is greater than 3:1. The cone angle of the nano tip is only 19.5°. The tip radius is less then 10 nm, which is of the sharpest {111}-bound, single-crystalline-silicon nano tips.

A new fabrication method for a three-dimensional (3D), single-crystal silicon micro-probe structure is developed. A probe card structure requires tips that are at least 50 μm tall on cantilevers thick enough to withstand a few mN of force as well as 50 μm of tip bending. The cantilever structure also must be able to move at least 50 μm of vertical motion, requiring a large sacrificial gap. The developed 3D fabrication method is based on the surface/bulk micromachining technology, which can fabricate released, high aspect ratio, single-crystal silicon microstructures with high yield using (111) silicon.

In this paper, an optimal and robust design method to implement a two-chip out-of-plane microaccelerometer system is presented. The two-chip microsystem consists of a MEMS chip for sensing the external acceleration and a CMOS chip for signal processing. An optimized design method to determine the device thickness, the sacrificial gap, and the vertical gap length of the M EMS sensing element is applied to minimize the fundamental noise level and also to achieve the robustness to the fabrication variations. In order to cancel out the offset and gain variations due to parasitic capacitances and process variations, a digitally trimmable architecture consisting of an 11 bit capacitor array is adopted in the analog front-end of the CMOS capacitive readout circuit. The out-of-plane microaccelerometer has the scale factor of 372 mV/g∼389 mV/g, the output nonlinearity of 0.43% FSO∼0.60% FSO, the input range of ±2 g and a bias instability of 122 μg∼229 μg. The signal-to-noise ratio and the noise equivalent resolution are measured to be 74.00 dB∼75.23 dB and 180 μg/rtHz∼190 μg/rtHz, respectively. The in-plane cross-axis sensitivities are measured to be 1.1%∼1.9% and 0.3%∼0.7% of the out-of-plane sensitivity, respectively. The results show that the optimal and robust design method for the MEMS sensing element and the highly trimmable capacity of the CMOS capacitive readout circuit are suitable to enhance the die-to-die uniformity of the packaged microsystem, without compromising the performance characteristics.

A high reliability CMOS-MEMS hybrid microaccelerometer system is presented. To enhance the temperature response and to minimize die-to-die variations, a low-noise continuous time front-end architecture with temperature compensation and parasitic cancellation is proposed. The temperature coefficients of the output bias and the scale factor are measured to be 37 ppm/degC and 27 ppm/degC, respectively. The bias instability level of the system is measured to be 42 mug. The integrated +16 V power supply protection block gives the enhanced system reliability and reduced form-factor.

This work represents a new method for measuring ocular torsion using optical flow. Feature points are obtained from reference and current image, and the relative optical flows of each point are calculated. The feature points are selected according to the strength of corner on the signature of iris. This method is robust and effective in calculation.

This paper presents a novel fabrication process for ultra-sharp nano tips on cantilevers with the radius of curvature of less than 10 nm using an (111) single crystalline silicon wafer. The nano tip height 15 /spl mu/m, and the aspect ratio is greater than 3:1. The cone angle of the tip is 19.5/spl deg/. Fabrication process is based on newly obtained etch characteristic data on silicon (111) and the sacrificial bulk micromachining (SBM) technology. The developed fabrication process is simple and robust, and well suited for ultra-sharp, high-aspect ratio nano tips on cantilevers.

The first sub-deg/hr bias stability gyroscope is fabricated in single crystal silicon using the SBM (sacrificial bulk micromachining) process. The quadrature error is a major concern in MEMS gyroscopes for high performance. To minimize the quadrature error, the fabricated gyroscope has a very flat bottom surface, which gives a highly symmetrical proof mass, and springs, which, in turn, provide high performance levels with significantly reduced quadrature error. The fabricated gyroscope has a bandwidth of 58 Hz, and 4-hr bias stability of 0.3 deg/hr.

A two chip implemented, wafer-level hermetically packaged accelerometer is presented. The accelerometer core is fabricated using the SBM (sacrificial bulk micromachining) process. The fabricated accelerometer core accomplishes high performance, high yield and high reliability by the inherent high-aspect-ratio, footing-free advantages of the SBM process. In order to protect the accelerometer core from environmental changes, a wafer-level hermetic packaging process is performed by using glass-silicon anodic bonding. The capacitive detection circuit adopts an EEPROM trimmable architecture to reduce the die-to-die variations. The fabricated accelerometer has the noise equivalent acceleration resolution of 43 /spl mu/g, input range of /spl plusmn/10 g, Output nonlinearity of 0.1% FSO, scale factor of 130 mV/g, and 4-hr bias stability of 1.10 mg.

This paper presents a method to measure angular velocity with two silicon-based MEMS acceleration sensors which have the resolution of 0.08 mg. This paper proposes measurement results using the technique to compensate the alignment error and estimate an angular velocity with two acceleration sensors fabricated by sacrificial bulk micromachining (SBM) process. The technique also estimates an angular velocity of a commercial cleaning robot, which has been tried to make the unit cost of production lower, by using two acceleration sensors without using a gyroscope.