Comparison of Lorentz-force MEMS magnetometers based on different capacitive sensing topologies

The paper presents a comparison in terms of sensitivity per unit area and unit current consumption of three different capacitive readout topologies, applied to the case of Lorentz-force based magnetometers. The topologies (parallel-plate, comb-finger and fringe-field) differ in terms of capacitance variation per unit displacement and in terms of quality factor. The results show that the fringe-field magnetometer can be quite competitive with other topologies thanks to the extremely high obtainable values of quality factor.