Abstract
This paper presents a new design of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based low-g accelerometer utilizing mode-localization effect in the three degree-of-freedom (3-DoF) weakly coupled MEMS resonators. Two sets of the 3-DoF mechanically coupled resonators are used on either side of the single proof mass and difference in the amplitude ratio of two resonator sets is considered as an output metric for the input acceleration measurement. The proof mass is electrostatically coupled to the perturbation resonators and for the sensitivity and input dynamic range tuning of MEMS accelerometer, electrostatic electrodes are used with each resonator in two sets of 3-DoF coupled resonators. The MEMS accelerometer is designed considering the foundry process constraints of silicon-on-insulator multi-user MEMS processes (SOIMUMPs). The performance of the MEMS accelerometer is analyzed through finite-element-method (FEM) based simulations. The sensitivity of the MEMS accelerometer in terms of amplitude ratio difference is obtained as 10.61/g for an input acceleration range of ±2 g with thermomechanical noise based resolution of 0.22 and nonlinearity less than 0.5%.
Highlights
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers have been widely used in many different applications for the last three decades due to their small size, light weight, batch fabrication and low power requirements
The resonant MEMS accelerometers are considered to be ideal for precision navigation and seismic sensing applications due to their high sensitivity and resolution [1,2]
Pandit et al [18] have presented a mode-localized MEMS accelerometer, for input acceleration from 0–1 g, using amplitude ratio difference (ARD) of 2-DoF weakly coupled single beam resonators that are attached on the two sides of the proof mass
Summary
Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers have been widely used in many different applications for the last three decades due to their small size, light weight, batch fabrication and low power requirements. Yang et al [15] modified the accelerometer design presented in [14] by using two single-tine weakly coupled resonators instead of DETF resonators to decrease the number of vibration modes and implement closed-loop readout sensing This allowed to achieve the high resolution and amplitude ratio sensitivity of 1.32/g. Pandit et al [18] have presented a mode-localized MEMS accelerometer, for input acceleration from 0–1 g, using amplitude ratio difference (ARD) of 2-DoF weakly coupled single beam resonators that are attached on the two sides of the proof mass. A new design of mode-localization based MEMS accelerometer is presented with two 3-DoF weakly coupled resonator systems attached on each side of proof mass for high sensitivity and large input range. The proposed design utilizes electrostatic tuning of the 3-DoF resonators to increase the sensitivity
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