A high-sensitivity MEMS gravimeter with a large dynamic range

Shihao Tang; Huafeng Liu; Shitao Yan; Xiaochao Xu; Wenjie Wu; Ji Fan; Jinquan Liu; Chenyuan Hu; Liangcheng Tu

doi:10.1038/s41378-019-0089-7

A high-sensitivity MEMS gravimeter with a large dynamic range

Microsyst Nanoeng. 2019 Oct 7:5:45. doi: 10.1038/s41378-019-0089-7. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Shihao Tang¹, Huafeng Liu¹, Shitao Yan¹, Xiaochao Xu¹, Wenjie Wu¹, Ji Fan^{1

2}, Jinquan Liu¹, Chenyuan Hu¹, Liangcheng Tu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ 1MOE Key Laboratory of Fundamental Physical Quantities Measurement & Hubei Key Laboratory of Gravitation and Quantum Physics, PGMF and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, PR China.
² 2Institute of Geophysics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, PR China.

Abstract

Precise measurement of variations in the local gravitational acceleration is valuable for natural hazard forecasting, prospecting, and geophysical studies. Common issues of the present gravimetry technologies include their high cost, high mass, and large volume, which can potentially be solved by micro-electromechanical-system (MEMS) technology. However, the reported MEMS gravimeter does not have a high sensitivity and a large dynamic range comparable with those of the present commercial gravimeters, lowering its practicability and ruling out worldwide deployment. In this paper, we introduce a more practical MEMS gravimeter that has a higher sensitivity of 8 μGal/√Hz and a larger dynamic range of 8000 mGal by using an advanced suspension design and a customized optical displacement transducer. The proposed MEMS gravimeter has performed the co-site earth tides measurement with a commercial superconducting gravimeter GWR iGrav with the results showing a correlation coefficient of 0.91.

Keywords: Electrical and electronic engineering; Optical physics.