Inertial sensors including gyroscopes, accelerometers and other position sensing devices have a broad range of applications in space, au tom otive, consumer electronics, computer games and virtual reality. The combination of MEMS and CMOS technologies enables the miniaturization of inertial sensors with integrated electronics and multi-axis integration. By using a DRIE CMOS-MEMS process, we developed a 3-axis integrated accelerometer and a z-axis integrated gyroscope.

 The following SEM shows a fabricated integrated z-axis gyroscope that consists of x-driving combs to excite the vibration and a y-accelerometer to sense the Coriolis acceleration induced by the external z-axis rotation. TSMC 0.35µm 4-metal CMOS process was used for the CMOS fabrication through MOSIS. The device is 0.8mm by 1mm.