A Miniaturized Piezoelectric MEMS Accelerometer with Polygon Topological Cantilever Structure

This work proposes a miniaturized piezoelectric MEMS accelerometer based on polygonal topology with an area of only 868 x 833 mu m(2). The device consists of six trapezoidal cantilever beams with shorter fixed sides. Meanwhile, a device with larger fixed sides is also designed for comparison. The theoretical and finite element models are established to analyze the effect of the beam ' s effective stiffness on the output voltage and natural frequency. As the stiffness of the device decreases, the natural frequency of the device decreases while the output signal increases. The proposed polygonal topology with shorter fixed sides has higher voltage sensitivity than the larger fixed one based on finite element simulations. The piezoelectric accelerometers are fabricated using Cavity-SOI substrates with a core piezoelectric film of aluminum nitride (AlN) of about 928 nm. The fabricated piezoelectric MEMS accelerometers have good linearity (0.99996) at accelerations less than 2 g. The measured natural frequency of the accelerometer with shorter fixed sides is 98 kHz, and the sensitivity, resolution, and minimum detectable signal at 400 Hz are 1.553 mV/g, 1 mg, and 2 mg, respectively. Compared with the traditional trapezoidal cantilever with the same diaphragm area, its output voltage sensitivity is increased by 22.48%.

Automated summary

This work presents a miniaturized piezoelectric MEMS accelerometer with an area of only 868 x 833 µm² based on a polygonal topology. The proposed design shows higher voltage sensitivity compared to a device with larger fixed sides. The fabricated accelerometers demonstrate good linearity and high resolution for accelerations less than 2 g.