Publications Details

Micromachined silicon seismic transducers

Barron, C.C.

Batch-fabricated silicon seismic transducers could revolutionize the discipline of CTBT monitoring by providing inexpensive, easily depolyable sensor arrays. Although our goal is to fabricate seismic sensors that provide the same performance level as the current state-of-the-art ``macro`` systems, if necessary one could deploy a larger number of these small sensors at closer proximity to the location being monitored in order to compensate for lower performance. We have chosen a modified pendulum design and are manufacturing prototypes in two different silicon micromachining fabrication technologies. The first set of prototypes, fabricated in our advanced surface- micromachining technology, are currently being packaged for testing in servo circuits -- we anticipate that these devices, which have masses in the 1--10 {mu}g range, will resolve sub-mG signals. Concurrently, we are developing a novel ``mold`` micromachining technology that promises to make proof masses in the 1--10 mg range possible -- our calculations indicate that devices made in this new technology will resolve down to at least sub-{mu}G signals, and may even approach to 10{sup {minus}10} G/{radical}Hz acceleration levels found in the low-earth-noise model.