Abstract Thorough investigation of the research done in the field of commercially available precise linear position sensors has revealed a certain gap in the travel range of 10μm to 2mm. In order to expand the scope of previous work on MEMS with sidewall embedded piezoresistors, this paper presents several contact mode position sensors within the same travel range. One goal of the current paper is to demonstrate the applicability and advantages of MEMS with embedded flexures and sidewall piezoresistors for precise position monitoring. Another goal is to optimize the sensor signals providing a trade-off between various parameters such as: sensitivity, linearity, travel range, and resonance frequency/bandwidth of the devices. Since those sensors might have various applications, in this paper some experimental results from seven sensors having different travel ranges and dynamic characteristics are reported. Particularly, the experimentally measured sensitivities in the range between 50μV/μm and 5mV/μm @1VDC power supply are presented. Also, raw sensor signals with magnitudes of 10% to 28% of the power supply voltage have been observed.
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