Performance Improvisation of Cantilever-type Silicon Micro AccelerationSensors Using Stress Concentration Regions Technique

Abstract

Acceleration sensors find applications in missile and competent munitions subsystems. Cantilever-type sensor's sensitivity and bandwidth are dependant on material properties of the cantilever and structure of proof mass. It is always desired to design a sensor as sensitive as possible but also maintaining higher bandwidth. In piezoresistive (cantilever-type) accelerometers, various techniques were employed by designers to enhance their sensitivity and bandwidth. Most of these techniques are usually focused on shape and size of either cantilever or proof mass. This paper presents a concept of creating stress concentration regions (SCRs) on the cantilever for enhancing its sensitivity. Five types of structures were simulated to study the behaviour of piezoresistive sensors with SCRs implementation. Use of SCRs results in substantial increase in the sensitivity, which is of the order of 1.85 times the nominal sensitivity. It was aimed at maximising sensor's performance factor, which is the product of sensor bandwidth and sensitivity. This study gives new dimension to the ways of improving performance of cantilevertype inertial piezoresistive sensor.

Performance enhancement for piezoresistive microaccelerometer by geometrical design: a focused review

“…Various SCR forms have been implemented to amplify the sensing stress, including holes, grooves, slots, etc. (Wang et al, 2011;Joshi et al, 2007;Wahid et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2012). Herein, the slotted-quad-beam structure reported by Zhao et al (2012) is taken as an example to verify the effectiveness of SCR.…”