A Self-Resonant MEMS-based Electrostatic Field Sensor with 4V/m/Hz Sensitivity

Denison, Timothy; Kuang, J.; Shafran, J.S.; Judy, Michael W.; Lundberg, K.H.

doi:10.1109/isscc.2006.1696157

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…One of the main drawbacks of field mills with rotating shutter are the extreme difficulties to miniaturize them since no reliable rotors exist on the micro scale. As a consequence, vibrating shutters have been introduced [ [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73]. The straight-forward implementation of a vibrating shutter is depicted in figure 10(a), where the shutter shields the respective sensing electrode at a large extend.…”

Section: Mems Field Millsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review on sensors for electric fields near power transmission systems

Hortschitz,

Kainz,

Beigelbeck

et al. 2024

Meas. Sci. Technol.

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Due to the necessary transition to renewable energy, the transport of electricity over long distances will become increasingly important, since the sites of sustainable electricity generation, such as wind or solar power parks, and the place of consumption can be very far apart. Currently, electricity is mainly transported via overhead AC lines. However, studies have shown that for long distances, transport via DC offers decisive advantages. To make optimal use of the existing route infrastructure, simultaneous AC and DC, or hybrid transmission, should be employed. The resulting electric field strengths must not exceed legally prescribed thresholds to avoid potentially harmful effects on humans and the environment. However, accurate quantification of the resulting electric fields is a major challenge in this context, as they can be easily distorted (e.g., by the measurement equipment itself). Nonetheless knowledge of the undisturbed field strengths from DC up to several multiples of the fundamental frequency of the power-grid (up to 1\,kHz) is required to ensure compliance with the thresholds. Both AC and DC electric fields can result in the generation of corona ions in the vicinity of the line. In the case of pure AC fields, the corona ions generated typically recombine in the immediate vicinity of the line and, therefore, have no influence on the field measurement further away. Unfortunately, this assumption does not hold for DC fields and hybrid fields, where corona ions can be transported far away from the line (e.g., by wind), and potentially interact with the measurement equipment yielding incorrect measurement results. This review will provide a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art technologies and methods which have been developed to address the problems of measuring the electric field near hybrid power lines.

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Section: Mems Field Millsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review on sensors for electric fields near power transmission systems

Hortschitz,

Kainz,

Beigelbeck

et al. 2024

Meas. Sci. Technol.

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“…In the recent three decades, with the development of micromachining technology, a variety of EFMs have been reported [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ], which have advantages of small volume, batch producibility and low power consumption. Most of them are charge–induction-based ones, whose sensing structures mainly consist of fixed sensing electrodes and grounded movable shielding electrodes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Electric Field Microsensor with Mutual Shielding Electrodes

et al. 2021

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This paper proposes an electric field microsensor (EFM) with mutual shielding electrodes. Based on the charge-induction principle, the EFM consists of fixed electrodes and piezoelectric-driving vertically-movable electrodes. All the fixed electrodes and movable electrodes work as both sensing electrodes and shielding electrodes. In other words, all the fixed and movable electrodes are sensing electrodes, and they are mutually shielding electrodes simultaneously. The movable electrodes are driven to periodically modulate the electric field distribution at themselves and the fixed electrodes, and the induced currents from both movable and fixed electrodes are generated simultaneously. The electrode structure adopts an interdigital structure, and the EFM has been simulated by finite element methods. Simulation results show that, since the sensing area of this EFM is doubled, the variation of induced charge is twice, and therefore the output signal of the sensor is increased. The piezoelectric material, lead zirconate titanate (PZT), is prepared by the sol–gel method, and the microsensor chip is fabricated.

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“…Due to small size, low power consumption, wear avoidance, and an ability to measure both DC and AC electric fields, electric field sensors based on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology are particularly suitable for applications in power systems [6,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. At present, most of the reported electric field microsensors (EFMs) are based on the charge induction principle similar to the field mills.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

AC/DC Fields Demodulation Methods of Resonant Electric Field Microsensor

Yang

Chu

et al. 2020

Micromachines

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Electric field microsensors have the advantages of a small size, a low power consumption, of avoiding wear, and of measuring both direct-current (DC) and alternating-current (AC) fields, which are especially suited to applications in power systems. However, previous reports were chiefly concerned with proposing new structures or improving the resolution, and there are no systematic studies on the signal characteristics of the microsensor output and the demodulation methods under different electric fields. In this paper, the use of an improved resonant microsensor with coplanar electrodes, and the signal characteristics under a DC field, power frequency field, and AC/DC hybrid fields were thoroughly analyzed respectively, and matching demodulation methods derived from synchronous detection were proposed. We theoretically obtained that the frequencies of the detectable electric fields should be less than half of the resonant frequency of the microsensor, and that the sensitivities of the microsensor were identical for AC/DC hybrid fields with different frequencies. Experiments were conducted to verify the proposed demodulation methods. Within electric field ranges of 0–667 kV/m, the uncertainties were 2.4% and 1.5% for the most common DC and 50 Hz power frequency fields, respectively. The frequency characteristic test results of the microsensor were in agreement with those of the theoretical analysis in the range of 0–1 kHz.

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A Self-Resonant MEMS-based Electrostatic Field Sensor with 4V/m/Hz Sensitivity

Cited by 13 publications

References 3 publications

Review on sensors for electric fields near power transmission systems

Review on sensors for electric fields near power transmission systems

An Electric Field Microsensor with Mutual Shielding Electrodes

AC/DC Fields Demodulation Methods of Resonant Electric Field Microsensor

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