A novel resonant accelerometer based on nanoelectromechanical oscillator

This paper reports a novel resonant accelerometer based on a nanoelectromechanical oscillator. An external acceleration is measured by detecting the frequency shift of the nanowire-based oscillator, which consists of a single semiconducting zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire doubly-clamped onto two micromachined electrodes. The nanowire is electrostatically driven into a resonant vibration, the frequency of which is self-detected using a field effect transistor (FET) mixer and a lock-in detection technology. A high sensitivity of kilohertz per g is achieved for the accelerometer in virtue of using the nanowire oscillator, which has a free-frequency at tens of megahertz.