High performance piezoresistive accelerometer based on the slot etching in the EB(eight-beam) structure

Presented in this paper is a development of a high-performance piezoresistive micro-accelerometer based on the slot etching in the EB (eight-beam) structure for the vibration detection of high speed spindle. The proposed SEB (slotted eight-beam) structure consists of a proof mass supported by four slotted sensing beams and four suspension beams, which in order to improve the trade-off between the sensitivity and natural frequency of piezoresistive accelerometer. The mechanical model and its mathematical solution are established for calculating the sensitivity and natural frequency behavior of the designed structure. The FEA (finite element analysis) and experimental results demonstrate that incorporating slots into the beams have a great help to improve the trade-off between sensitivity and natural frequency of piezoresistive accelerometer.