Murata's silicon capacitive sensors are made of single crystal silicon and glass. These materials ensure exceptional reliability, unprecedented accuracy and excellent stability over time and temperature. Manufacturing technologies are borrowed from semiconductor industry, which provides mass production capability and cost efficiency. Additional MEMS-specific technologies include wafer bonding and deep reactive ion etching of silicon.
Murata Electronics is using the simple and stable capacitive detection principle. It is based on the variation of the distance between two surfaces. The capacitance, or charge storage capacity of a pair of surfaces, depends on their distance and on the overlapping surface area. Murata Electronics' 3D MEMS sensors are robust structures that are very sensitive to inertial forces and pressure but are insensitive to other environmental variables and causes of failure. Symmetry and other sound design principles of the accelerometers and gyroscopes help to improve stability, linearity, cross-axis sensitivity and susceptibility to vibrations.