CMOS Compatible Bulk Micromachining

Abstract

The last two decades have seen the emergence and prevalence of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. The reduction in size, low power consumption and low cost is the ultimate goals of application specific MEMS devices. One way to achieve these goals is the monolithic integration of MEMS technology with the standard integrated circuit (IC) technol‐ ogy. The utilization of the conventional IC technology as a platform for design of the fastgrowing MEMS technology has led to development of numerous devices and technologies in the past years. Much effort has been made and large capital has been invested into mainstream Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) compatible MEMS technology. This approach has enabled MEMS devices to be directly integrated with CMOS circuits, allowing smaller device sizes and higher performances. This integration of MEMS technology with the mainstream CMOS technology is referred to as CMOS-MEMS technology [1].