Abstract
This thesis presents a novel CMOS-MEMS out-of-plane linear accelerometer. This capacitance type accelerometer contains special designed gap-closing sensing electrode arrays with on-chip fully differential sensing circuits. Moreover, the comb-finger electrodes have the characteristics of high fill-factor and sub-micron gap to increase the sensing capacitance. Thus, the sensitivity and signal to noise ratio can be further improved. This study has established a post-CMOS wet-etching process to realize the accelerometer with sensing electrodes of sub-micron gap in the out-of-plane direction. The present accelerometer has been demonstrated using the standard TSMC 2P4M process plus the post-release technique. This study also integrates previous in-plane linear accelerometers to fabricate a fully differential 3-axes accelerometer chip.