A Novel Resonant Accelerometer Based on Quartz on Silicon (QoS)

Abstract

a novel way to fabricate quartz resonant accelerometer is proposed in this paper, which mainly includes Quartz on Silicon (QoS) technology and Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) etching. The QoS method can fabricate ultra-thin quartz wafer on silicon, so that the quartz layer can be easily etched by ICP dry etching for replacing conventional fluoride-based wet etching. Based on the proposed fabrication method, a quartz micro accelerometer with micro-leverage mechanism amplifying the inertial force is designed, simulated and fabricated. A link beam is designed between micro-leverage and DETF to make a single micro-leverage effective in DETF, which can concentrate and distribute stress into two DETF beams for making their axial stress basically same. The simulation sensitivity of the accelerometer is 31.88 Hz/g with the amplification of micro-leverage.