Many announcements are now available by World Wide Web in addition to ftp. For World Wide Web users, the URL is "http://mems.isi.edu/mems". Short Course on Monolithic Surface-Micromachined Inertial Sensors: When: 23-24 May 1995 Where: San Francisco Airport, Crown Sterling Suites Hotel, Burlingame, Ca. Organizers: Profs. Bernhard E. Boser, Roger T. Howe, and Albert P. Pisano Surface micromachining has enabled the integration of polysilicon micromechanical structures with CMOS or Bipolar/MOS electronics. This technology is already having a major impact in accelerometers for air-bag deployment and has the potential for much higher performance accelerometers, as well as vibratory rate gyroscopes. Successful design of these closed-loop sensors requires a background in the microstructure and circuit technology, the mechanical design of "laminar" suspensions and proof masses, and the system and circuit approaches for sensing and controlling the position of the sense element. This two-day short course will supply the basic knowledge and the design principles to understand the capabilities and limitations of surface micromachined sensors for both accelerometers and for gyroscopes. During the first day, participants will be introduced to the process, sense element, and circuit fundamentals. The Analog Devices XL-50 monolithic accelerometer will be discussed in detail as a motivating example. The second day will tackle the design of high-performance inertial sensors and introduce several domain-specific CAD tools. Fabrication constraints, packaging, sensor errors, analog vs. digital closed-loop performance trade-offs, and system partitioning are among the topics that will be addressed. A sigma-delta modular based accelerometer will be used to focus the discussion. The course closes with an open session for interaction with the lecturers. For more information about this information please see: "/mems/Announcements/ucb_sensors_course.txt" in the ISI MEMS Archive ("mems.isi.edu"). Or via WWW: http://kowloon.eecs.berkeley.edu/~boser/shortcourse.html http://mems.isi.edu/mems e-mail: course@garnet.berkeley.edu phone: (510) 642-4151 fax: (510) 643-8683 surface mail: Continuing Education in Engineering University Extension University of California 2223 Fulton Street Berkeley, CA 94720-7010