A novel stress isolation guard-ring design for the improvement of a three-axis piezoresistive accelerometer

Abstract

This study designs and implements a stress isolation guard-ring structure to improve the performances of the existing single proof-mass three-axis piezoresistive accelerometer. Thus, the environment disturbances, such as temperature variation and force/deflection transmittance, for a packaged three-axis piezoresistive accelerometer are significantly reduced. In application, the three-axis piezoresistive accelerometer has been fabricated using the bulk micromachining process on the SOI wafer. Experimental results show that the out-of-plane deformation of the suspended spring mass on the packaged accelerometer is reduced from 0.72 to 0.10 νm at a 150 °C temperature elevation. The temperature coefficient of zero-g offset for the presented sensor is reduced, and the temperature-induced sensitivity variation is minimized as well. Measurements also demonstrate that the guard-ring design successfully reduces the false signals induced by the force and displacement transmittance disturbances for one order of magnitude. Moreover, the three-axis acceleration sensing for the presented accelerometer with guard ring has also been demonstrated with sensitivities of 0.12-0.17 mV V-1 g -1 and nonlinearity < 1.02%. © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd.