Optimal design and nonlinearities in a z-axis resonant accelerometer

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometers are micro-sized devices largely used for detecting accelerations in the consumer and automotive market. Both capacitive and resonant sensing have been successfully employed in these devices. In the present work, we focus on a z-axis resonant accelerometer recently proposed in [1] fabricated by the Thelma© surface-micromachining technique developed by STMicroelectronics. After a full non-linear dynamic study, an optimization of the design of the device is carried out. The main goal of the optimization process is to increase the sensitivity of the device together with the reliability and the linearity.