A Novel Two-Axis Differential Resonant Accelerometer Based on Graphene with Transmission Beams

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jan 14;22(2):641. doi: 10.3390/s22020641.

Abstract

In this paper, a novel two-axis differential resonant accelerometer based on graphene with transmission beams is presented. This accelerometer can not only reduce the cross sensitivity, but also overcome the influence of gravity, realizing fast and accurate measurement of the direction and magnitude of acceleration on the horizontal plane. The simulation results show that the critical buckling acceleration is 460 g, the linear range is 0-89 g, while the differential sensitivity is 50,919 Hz/g, which is generally higher than that of the resonant accelerometer reported previously. Thus, the accelerometer belongs to the ultra-high sensitivity accelerometer. In addition, increasing the length and tension of graphene can obviously increase the critical linear acceleration and critical buckling acceleration with the decreasing sensitivity of the accelerometer. Additionally, the size change of the force transfer structure can significantly affect the detection performance. As the etching accuracy reaches the order of 100 nm, the critical buckling acceleration can reach up to 5 × 104 g, with a sensitivity of 250 Hz/g. To sum up, a feasible design of a biaxial graphene resonant accelerometer is proposed in this work, which provides a theoretical reference for the fabrication of a graphene accelerometer with high precision and stability.

Keywords: biaxial accelerometer; differential mode; finite element simulation; graphene resonant.