Design and fabrication of novel high-impact silicon micro-mechanical accelerometer

The design and manufacturing method of a novel high-impact silicon micro-mechanical accelerometer is presented in this paper.A whole-beam structure is used in this accelerometer.In this accelerometer,the two cantilevers with the same structures and the opposite distribution directions in the silicon plane.There are two varistors formed by boron proliferation on the top of each cantilever.The four varistors form the Wheatstone full bridge.Two lateral sides of cantilever and overload protection structure are fabricated using DRIE technology.A novel overload protection curvature is designed to be similar to the cantilever bending shape which is bearing the greatest acceleration.This design increases the overload protection and improves the vibration damping of accelerometer to the critical damping.The working frequency bandwidth of accelerometer is increased effectively.The experiments show that the sensitivity of accelerometer reaches 3.024 μV/g,the working frequency bandwidth changes from 0 to 81 kHz and measuring scope changes from 0 to 50 000 g,the performances of accelerometer can meet the demands of impact measurement.