A Pull-in Operation Mode Accelerometer
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Pakula, Lukasz; French, Patrick
- Source
- 2006 5th IEEE Conference on Sensors Sensors, 2006. 5th IEEE Conference on. :1127-1130 Oct, 2006
- Subject
- Signal Processing and Analysis
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Accelerometers
Acceleration
Voltage
Electrodes
Time measurement
Equations
Damping
Digital circuits
Micromachining
Pulse measurements
- Language
- ISSN
- 1930-0395
In this paper an accelerometer, which measures the pull-in time to obtain the acceleration is presented. As the pull-in time is a semi digital signal, the output of the device can be measured with a full digital circuit. No analogue readout circuit is required. The sensitivity and nonlinearity are comparable with the differential capacitive sensing devices. The accelerometer has been fabricated by surface micromachining using Al as the mechanical layer and phosphosilicate glass as the sacrificial layer. The initial measurements have been performed.