A vacuum packaged surface micromachined resonant accelerometer

Author

Seshia, Ashwin A. ; Palaniapan, Moorthi ; Roessig, Trey A. ; Howe, Roger T. ; Gooch, Roland W. ; Schimert, Thomas R. ; Montague, Stephen

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

11

Issue

6

fYear

2002

fDate

12/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

784

Lastpage

793

Abstract

This paper describes the operation of a vacuum packaged resonant accelerometer subjected to static and dynamic acceleration testing. The device response is in broad agreement with a new analytical model of its behavior under an applied time-varying acceleration. Measurements include tests of the scale factor of the sensor and the dependence of the output sideband power and the noise floor of the double-ended tuning fork oscillators as a function of the applied acceleration frequency. The resolution of resonant accelerometers is shown to degrade 20 dB/decade beyond a certain characteristic acceleration corner frequency. A prototype device was fabricated at Sandia National Laboratories and exhibits a noise floor of 40 μg/√(Hz) for an input acceleration frequency of 300 Hz.

Keywords

accelerometers; micromachining; micromechanical resonators; microsensors; semiconductor device measurement; semiconductor device noise; semiconductor device packaging; 300 Hz; Sandia National Laboratories; applied time-varying acceleration; corner frequency; double-ended tuning fork oscillators; dynamic acceleration testing; noise floor; output sideband power; resonant accelerometer; scale factor; static acceleration testing; surface micromachining; vacuum packaged device; Acceleration; Accelerometers; Analytical models; Frequency measurement; Life estimation; Noise measurement; Packaging; Power measurement; Resonance; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1057-7157

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JMEMS.2002.805207

Filename

1097799