Incorporation of the stress concentration slots into the flexures for a high-performance microaccelerometer

Presented in this paper is a development of a high-performance piezoresistive microaccelerometer based on the slot etching in the quad flexures for the vibration detection of high speed spindle. The proposed structure consists of a proof mass supported by four thin flexures with slots etched in the middle. Boron diffused piezoresistors located near the stress concentration regions are used for sensing the localized stress resulting from the incorporation of the slots into the flexures. Theoretical analysis and finite element analysis show satisfactory results of an improved sensitivity and favorable natural frequency higher than 10 kHz, conforming to the initial design requirements. The microfabrication techniques are described to prototype the two accelerometer chips, one with slots and the other one without slots. The tested microaccelerometers with 3 V DC power supply show an average sensitivity of 0.424 mV/g normal to the proof mass plane, increased by 60.6% than the ones without slots. An average transverse sensitivity is found to be 9.2 μV/g along X axis and 14.2 μV/g along Y axis, either of which is less than 3.5% of prime-axis sensitivity. Concerning the resonant frequency, dynamic experiment shows about 12.46 kHz and is available for the proposed design with a tiny loss of 3.5% compared with the quad-beam design. When taking the product of sensitivity and natural frequency as judgment criteria, an inspiring increase by 28.6% of the figure of merit is accomplished for the proposed accelerometer. Overall, the findings of this study confirm the feasibility of incorporating slots into the conventional configurations to improve the sensor sensitivity while maintaining a comparatively high natural frequency.