A self-resonant MEMS-based electrostatic field sensor

Author

Lundberg, Kent H. ; Shafran, John S. ; Kuang, Jinbo ; Judy, Mike ; Denison, Timothy A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA

fYear

2006

fDate

14-16 June 2006

Abstract

An electric-field sensor is presented for applications such as xerography. The sensor combines a vibrating MEMS structure with synchronous-detection electronics. The sensor architecture has three major blocks: a MEMS shutter, a sense interface, and a self-resonant drive loop that feeds back to the MEMS shutter. The self-resonant feedback loop is the enabling technology that provides the improved performance reported here. Prototyped in the iMEMS3 process at Analog Devices, the noise floor is 4.0 V/m/radic(Hz) and the integral nonlinearity is 20 V/m over a range of plusmn700 kV/m, which is an order-of-magnitude improvement over existing MEMS devices

Keywords

electric fields; electrophotography; micromechanical devices; photodetectors; MEMS shutter; iMEMS3 process; self-resonant MEMS-based electrostatic field sensor; self-resonant drive loop; self-resonant feedback loop; sense interface; sensor architecture; synchronous-detection electronics; vibrating MEMS structure; xerography; Circuits; Electric variables measurement; Electrodes; Electrophotography; Electrostatics; Feedback loop; Geophysical measurements; Micromechanical devices; Monitoring; Semiconductor device noise;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

American Control Conference, 2006

Conference_Location

Minneapolis, MN

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0209-3

Electronic_ISBN

1-4244-0209-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ACC.2006.1656384

Filename

1656384