Design, fabrication and testing of a micromachined seismometer with NANO-G resolution

Author

Pike, W.T. ; Standley, I.M. ; Karl, W.J. ; Kumar, S. ; Stemple, T. ; Vijendran, S.J. ; Hopf, T.

Author_Institution

Electr. & Electron. Eng., Imperial Coll. London, London, UK

fYear

2009

fDate

21-25 June 2009

Firstpage

668

Lastpage

671

Abstract

We have designed a high resolution microseismometer by combining a low-resonant-frequency, high-quality-factor suspension with a sensitive lateral capacitive transducer under electromagnetic feedback control. It has been fabricated and tested to demonstrate for the first time a micromachined seismometer capable of resolving the Earth´s ambient seismicity and with the best acceleration resolution of any micromachined device to date, with a self noise down to 4ng/radic(Hz).

Keywords

accelerometers; capacitive sensors; micromachining; micromechanical devices; seismometers; Earth´s ambient seismicity; acceleration resolution; electromagnetic feedback control; high resolution microseismometer; high-quality- factor suspension; low-resonant-frequency; nano-G resolution; noise; sensitive lateral capacitive transducer; Fabrication; Testing; Micromachining; accelerometer; noise; seismometer;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference, 2009. TRANSDUCERS 2009. International

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4190-7

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4193-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SENSOR.2009.5285413

Filename

5285413