Design, Fabrication and Characterization of High-G Acceleration Sensors for Automotive Industry and Test Structures for the Process Characterization

This paper is dedicated to the development of high-g acceleration sensors for automotive industry. Most of our designed sensors target the common measurement range of ±400 g with a 0.2 g threshold sensitivity. Additionally, all sensor variants have to survive permanent shocks up to 4,000 g. We report on the design, fabrication and characterization of various MEMS sensor elements as well as on additional test structures. In particular, the influence of stress (during production but also through the package) is investigated with test structures for optical and electrical measurements and minimized as good as possible.