Design and Demonstration of an In-Plane Micro-Optical-Electro-Mechanical-System Accelerometer Based on Talbot Effect of Dual-Layer Gratings

Abstract

An ultrasensitive single-axis in-plane micro-optical-electro-mechanical-system (MOEMS) accelerometer based on the Talbot effect of dual-layer gratings is proposed. Based on the Talbot effect of gratings, the acceleration can be converted into the variation of diffraction intensity, thus changing the voltage signal of photodetectors. We investigated and optimized the design of the mechanical structure; the resonant frequency of the accelerometer is 1878.9 Hz and the mechanical sensitivity is 0.14 μm/g. And the optical grating parameters have also optimized with a period of 4 μm and a grating interval of 10 μm. The experimental results demonstrated that the in-plane MOEMS accelerometer with an optimal design achieved an acceleration sensitivity of 0.74 V/g (with better than 0.4% nonlinearity), a bias stability of 75 μg and an acceleration resolution of 2.0 mg, suggesting its potential applications in smartphones, automotive electronics, and structural health detection.

Keywords

• optical micro-grating
• Talbot effect
• optical interference
• micro-accelerometer