Compact biaxial micromachined resonant accelerometer

Abstract

This paper presents a biaxial silicon resonant microaccelerometer characterized by a high sensitivity and a low cross-axis sensitivity. The device has a detection structure with a single inertial mass and two pairs of resonating beams allowing for the simultaneous differential measurement of acceleration acting along two different axes. The design of the accelerometer and in particular the geometrical configuration of the resonating elements is analytically optimized and finalized through finite element simulations. Experimental results on a fabricated device demonstrate a mean differential sensitivity of 250 Hz g−1 at a polarization voltage of 4 V, around a resonance frequency of 84 kHz.