Design and Development of a MOEMS Accelerometer Using SOI Technology

José Mireles Jr; Ángel Sauceda; Abimael Jiménez; Manuel Ramos; Rafael Gonzalez-Landaeta

doi:10.3390/mi14010231

Design and Development of a MOEMS Accelerometer Using SOI Technology

Micromachines (Basel). 2023 Jan 16;14(1):231. doi: 10.3390/mi14010231.

Authors

José Mireles Jr^{1

2}, Ángel Sauceda^{1

2}, Abimael Jiménez^{1

2}, Manuel Ramos^{1

3}, Rafael Gonzalez-Landaeta²

Affiliations

¹ Applied Science and Technology Research Center, Instituto de Ingeniería y Tecnología, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 450 Avenida del Charro, Ciudad Juárez 32310, Mexico.
² Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Instituto de Ingeniería y Tecnología, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 450 Avenida del Charro, Ciudad Juárez 32310, Mexico.
³ Department of Physics and Mathematics, Instituto de Ingeniería y Tecnología, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 450 Avenida del Charro, Ciudad Juárez 32310, Mexico.

Abstract

The micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) sensors are suitable devices for vibrational analysis in complex systems. The Fabry-Pérot interferometer (FPI) is used due to its high sensitivity and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI). Here, we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MEMS device, which is embedded in a metallic package and connected to an optical fiber. This integrated micro-opto-electro-mechanical system (MOEMS) sensor contains a mass structure and handle layers coupled with four designed springs built on the device layer. An optical reading system using an FPI is used for displacement interrogation with a demodulation technique implemented in LabVIEW^®. The results indicate that our designed MOEMS sensor exhibits a main resonant frequency of 1274 Hz with damping ratio of 0.0173 under running conditions up to 7 g, in agreement with the analytical model. Our experimental findings show that our designed and fabricated MOEMS sensor has the potential for engineering application to monitor vibrations under high-electromagnetic environmental conditions.

Keywords: Fabry–Pérot interferometry; demodulation; micro-opto-electro-mechanical system (MOEMS); silicon-on-insulator (SOI); vibration measurement.

Grants and funding

The authors thank the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez and Instituto de Ingeniería y Tecnología for the usage of the laboratory facilities at the open user Centro de Investigación en Ciencia y Tecnología Aplicada (https://www.uacj.mx/IIT/CICTA/ accessed on 27 December 2022) of UACJ. The authors thank the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores of Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT-México) for providing the research fellowship. This work was published with the financial support of the Instituto de Innovación y Competitividad de la Secretaría de Innovación y Desarrollo Económico del Estado de Chihuahua (2022–2028), which provided partial financial support toward the article processing charges.