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Characterization of SOI MEMS capacitive accelerometer under varying acceleration shock pulse durations

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Abstract

In this work, the response of the z-axis differential capacitive MEMS accelerometer structure is studied under mechanical shock. The resonant frequency of the accelerometer is 9.12 kHz, and the corresponding time-period (Tn) is 0.11 ms. Simulation of the accelerometer structure under 30 g half-sine acceleration shocks of different durations (0.1–4 ms) revealed that the output amplitude attains the input acceleration shock value when the pulse duration (T) ≥ 0.9 ms. The simulated output time-lag over the input pulse is found to be around 0.2 ± 0.03 msec. The accelerometer showed higher rise-time (10−90 %) and fall-time (90−10 %) for the 0.1–0.5 ms shock pulse durations. The silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MEMS technology is employed to fabricate the accelerometer structure. The packaged accelerometer is tested under the 30 g half-sine acceleration shocks generated by an electrodynamic shaker. The measured output amplitude of the accelerometer achieved the input acceleration value when the shock pulse duration (T) ≥ 9Tn, and the measured time-lag varies from 0.05 to 0.3 msec. The measurement results showed that the output follows the input shock pulse when rise-time (tr) ≥ Tn and fall-time (tf) ≥ 2.7 Tn. The high value of pre-pulse noise is observed for the lower shock-pulse duration (≤ 0.5 ms), and the noise level (peak-to-peak) gets substantially minimized only when T ≥ 27 Tn.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Director SSPL for permission to publish this work. Nidhi Gupta would like to thanks the funding agency of the Government of India for providing her assistantship. The authors also sincerely thank the MEMS fabrication team of STARC, Bangalore. Help from other colleagues is also acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Solid State Physics Laboratory, DRDO, Lucknow Road, Timarpur, Delhi, 110054, India

    Nidhi Gupta, Shankar Dutta, Y. Parmar, V. Gond & S. Gupta

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Hyderabad, 502285, India

    Nidhi Gupta & Siva Rama Krishna Vanjari

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  1. Nidhi Gupta
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  2. Shankar Dutta
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  3. Y. Parmar
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  4. V. Gond
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  5. Siva Rama Krishna Vanjari
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  6. S. Gupta
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Correspondence to Shankar Dutta.

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Gupta, N., Dutta, S., Parmar, Y. et al. Characterization of SOI MEMS capacitive accelerometer under varying acceleration shock pulse durations. Microsyst Technol 27, 4319–4327 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-021-05227-y

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