Surface micromachined accelerometer using ferroelectric substrate

Piezoelectric MEMS sensors: state-of-the-art and perspectives

“…The inset shows the front side of the accelerometer with zoom-in of the interdigitated electrodes (from [197]). These accelerometer designs exploiting the direct piezoelectric effect have been made from various materials such as ZnO [186][187][188][189], AlN [27,190], PZT [191][192][193][194][195][196][197] and PVDF [198][199][200][201][202][203]. Typically, these accelerometers use a proof mass in the range of 1-10 mg made out of bulk micromachined silicon which is connected to the silicon substrate frame using flexural structures on which the piezoelectric thin film is integrated using several of the deposition techniques discussed earlier.…”

“…Table 10 compares the performance of some of the micromachined piezoelectric accelerometers reported in the literature. Aoyagi et al [191] presented a novel concept for acceleration sensing based upon the change in capacitance due to change in fringing field coupling in an interdigitated capacitor-parylene proof mass located in proximity to a high dielectric constant ε r ∼ 2600 bulk PZT substrate.…”

Micromachined high-g accelerometers: a review

“…Keeping in mind micromachined sensors, thin film polymers such as polyvinylidene fluoride or PVDF [96][97][98][99][100][101][102] and ceramics such as zinc oxide [96,[103][104][105][106], PZT [96,[107][108][109][110][111][112][113] and aluminum nitride [96,114,115] are used in MEMS and other micromachined sensors as they exhibit piezoelectricity several orders greater than that of quartz and its derivatives [90,92]. Further, they can be deposited using common micromachining processes making them suitable for mass production [90,96,[116][117][118].…”

Ultrathin Ferroelectric Films: Growth, Characterization, Physics and Applications

“…Thereby, the ambient vibrational energy can be efficiently converted to electrical energy via the MEMS piezoelectric energy harvesting device and would significantly power wireless MEMS sensor node. Besides residual stress, engineering has also been effectively used to create cantilever structures with negative curvatures by Polcawich [ 507 ], with the fabricated PZT RF MEMS switch being shown in Figure 24 e. Another cantilever-based piezoelectric device is piezoelectric accelerometers, which can be used for accurate inertial measurements, specifically for vibration level sensing and for monitoring temporal variations in acceleration [ 508 , 509 ]. Just as cantilevers, membrane based devices have also evolved from single element as micromotors to membrane arrays.…”