Design and Demonstration of a Bulk Micromachined Fabry–PÉrot μg-Resolution Accelerometer

A high resolution, passive, bulk-micromachined accelerometer based on the transmission-type intrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer has been designed, fabricated and, for the first time, experimentally evaluated via direct inertial characterization. The device characterization includes frequency- and time-domain evaluation. The sensor characteristics of bandwidth, range, sensitivity, and resolution are obtained experimentally and the tradeoffs between these performance parameters are examined. Also, presented is the evaluation of the effects of the excitation of multiple vibration modes in such a sensor. The sensor performance is observed to have a resolution limits below a mug with a demonstrated 30 mug resolution over a sensing bandwidth greater than 2 kHz and better than 1 dynamic range.