Frequency-Modulated Lorentz Force Magnetometer With Enhanced Sensitivity via Mechanical Amplification

This letter presents a micromachined silicon Lorentz force magnetometer, which consists of a flexural beam resonator coupled to current-carrying silicon beams via a microleverage mechanism. The flexural beam resonator is a force sensor, which measures the magnetic field through resonant frequency shift induced by the Lorentz force, which acts as an axial load. Previous frequency-modulated Lorentz force magnetometers suffer from low sensitivity, limited by both fabrication restrictions and lack of a force amplification mechanism. In this letter, the microleverage mechanism amplifies the Lorentz force, thereby enhancing the sensitivity of the magnetometer by a factor of 42. The device has a measured sensitivity of 6687 ppm/(mA · T), which is two orders of magnitude larger than the prior state-of-the-art. The measured results agree with an analytical model and finite-element analysis. The frequency stability of the sensor is limited by the quality factor (Q) of 540, which can be increased through improved vacuum packaging.