Fabry-Perot Interferometer Based on an Aluminum-Polyimide Composite Diaphragm Integrated With Mass for Acceleration Sensing

Abstract

This study proposes a miniature and highly sensitive Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) based on aluminum -polyimide diaphragm integrated with a mass block for acceleration sensing. The composite diaphragms with a radius and thickness of 3.5 mm and 630 nm are manufactured by Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technology. To increase the adhesion of the polyimide diaphragm to silicon wafer and improve the quality of deflectable diaphragm, a 30-nm-thick aluminum diaphragm is first coated on the silicon wafer by magnetron sputtering; a silicon wafer in the intermediate diaphragm is reserved as a mass block to form an integrated structure. Air cavity of the FPI formed by this composite diaphragm is modulated via external vibration signals, leading to a variation in the length of the cavity. Three fiber optic Fabry-Perot accelerometers (FOFPAs) are fabricated with a measured average sensitivity and acceleration resolution of 2.6 V/g (100 Hz-3.2 kHz) and 4.12 µg/Hz 1/2 respectively, which show high consistency and manufacturing reproducibility. Good heat resistance performance of the sensor below 280 • can also be observed obviously. Thus, this proposed sensor is anticipated to have wide application prospects in micro vibration monitoring in high temperature.INDEX TERMS MEMS, aluminum-polyimide diaphragm, Fabry-Perot Interferometer, acceleration sensing.SHILI LI received the B.S. degree from Anhui University, Hefei, China, where she is currently pursuing the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees with the Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronic Information Acquisition and Manipulation of Ministry of Education. Her research interests include fiber optic sensing and engineering applications.