Closed-loop micromachined accelerometer based on thermal convection

Author

Garraud, A. ; Combette, P. ; Deblonde, Antoine ; Loisel, P. ; Giani, Annarita

Author_Institution

Inst. d´E´lectronique du Sud, Univ. of Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France

Volume

7

Issue

11

fYear

2012

fDate

11/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1092

Lastpage

1093

Abstract

A significant improvement of thermal accelerometer bandwidth κ demonstrated. In a classic open-loop configuration, a micromachined thermal accelerometer having a width of 1500 μm has a sensitivity of 0.045°C/g and a bandwidth up to 66 Hz limited by gas thermal response. Anew sensor architecture is proposed to improve bandwidth with no sensitivity decrease: a closed-loop configuration with the addition of two resistors placed close to detectors to rebalance their temperature. They directly act on the thermal response of the fluid. Thus, sensor bandwidth is increased up to 1 kHz with a similar sensitivity of 0.034°C/g.

Keywords

accelerometers; closed loop systems; convection; micromechanical devices; open loop systems; resistors; classic open-loop configuration; closed-loop configuration; closed-loop micromachined accelerometer; gas thermal response; micromachined thermal accelerometer; resistors; sensor architecture; sensor bandwidth; thermal accelerometer bandwidth; thermal convection; thermal response;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Micro & Nano Letters, IET

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1750-0443

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/mnl.2012.0702

Filename

6409020