Design of a thermal-bubble-based micromachined accelerometer

Abstract

A novel thermal-bubble-based micromachined accelerometer with advantages of no proof mass, preferable frequency response, and high sensitivity is presented in this paper. Unlike the other techniques, the only moving element in the proposed device is a small thermal-bubble created by using a high flux heater to vaporize the liquid contained in the micro chamber. Numerical simulations are conducted to study the heat transfer and fluid flow behavior of the device and to demonstrate the feasibility of our design. The results show that the sensor has good linearity in the range from 0 to 10 g, and the normal sensitivity is about 1 /spl deg/C/g for operating power of 40 mW. The response time of the accelerometer filled up with water is close to 58 ms.