Design of a bulk-micromachined piezoelectric accelerometer

Conference Name:IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium. Conference Address: New York, NY. Time:OCT 28-31, 2007.A bulk-micromachined piezoelectric accelerometer is proposed and designed, in which the bulk-micromachined silicon seismic mass is suspended by the cantilevers and part of cantilever is covered with ZnO piezoelectric thin film. In this paper, we first derive the one-dimensional analytical model of the piezoelectric cantilever to study the factors affecting the sensitivity of the accelerometer, and then design the piezoelectric accelerometers with straight and folded cantilever structures. Totally, 12 different structures of the microaccelemeter are investigated. The results show that this type of bulk-micromachined piezoelectric accelerometer can own high sensitivity and wide working range to meet requirement of some applications in aerospace and mechanical shock inspection for vehicles