Parylene-on-oil encapsulation process for bio-inspired angular accelerometer

Abstract

This paper reports on a wafer-level parylene-on-oil encapsulation process for a bio-inspired angular accelerometer with thermal transduction. The angular accelerometer's microtorus geometry, which is inspired by the semicircular canals, provides inherent linear acceleration insensitivity, while promoting in-plane angular acceleration. Compared to more traditional post-fabrication fluid filling of microchannels, the in-process fluid encapsulation allows for batch-fabricated, bubble-free, fluid-filled microchannels. To show the feasibility of this process, thermal angular accelerometers were fabricated and tested, showing a sensitivity of 24.7μV/deg/s ² , which compares well with state-of-the-art capacitive angular accelerometers.