MEMS sensors as building blocks for the connected world

Building blocks for the connected world: this image from a scanning electron microscope shows the finely etched silicon structures of a Bosch acceleration sensor. By way of comparison, a human hair has been laid on top of the structure. The silicon structures at the center of the chip measure acceleration and pitch in all three spatial dimensions. The individual “beams” are roughly 2 micrometers (µm) wide and 20 µm high. One micrometer is one-thousandth of a millimeter (0.001 millimeters). If a cell phone containing one of these sensors is moved, the “beams” move by a few tens of nanometers (10 nm = 0.01 µm). By comparison, the hair is 90 µm thick. The colors in the image are the result of subsequent processing.