Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35

Lead zirconate titanate MEMS accelerometer using

interdigitated electrodes
Han Geun Yu a , L. Zou b , K. Deng b , R. Wolf c , S. Tadigadapa a,∗ , S. Trolier-McKinstry c
aDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
b Wilcoxon Research Inc., Gaithersburg, MD, USA
c Department of Material Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Received 6 April 2003; received in revised form 18 June 2003; accepted 19 June 2003

Abstract

Piezoelectric bulk micromachined accelerometers have been designed and fabricated using silicon micromachining techniques. These
devices use interdigitated (IDT) electrodes to exploit a combination of the d33 and d31 piezoelectric responses of lead zirconate titanate
(PZT) thin films. A simple fabrication process involving only three photomasks and two deep-trench reactive ion-etching (DRIE) steps has
been developed. Frequency response measurement has been used to measure the sensitivity of the devices as well as the bandwidth. Voltage
sensitivities in the range of 1.3–7.86 mV/g with corresponding resonance frequencies in the range of 23–12 kHz have been obtained for
these accelerometers. The voltage sensitivity mode of the interdigitated electrode accelerometer results in a higher acceleration sensitivity
than that for a through-the-thickness poled PZT accelerometers with identical device structure.
© 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: MEMS Accelerometer; Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT); Interdigitated Electrode; Piezoelectric Accelerometer

1. Introduction the PZT film is poled through-the-thickness of the film,

the applied stress and poling directions are perpendicular
Commercialization of high-performance, low cost, micro- and results in the d31 -mode response. However, if the PZT
electromechanical (MEM) accelerometers for automotive film is poled in the plane of the film, the in-plane stress
applications has motivated the interest in utilizing similar and poling direction can be made to coincide resulting in
devices in consumer products, biomedical devices, industrial the d33 -response. For PZT films, the typical d33 piezoelec-
monitoring, and military applications, which require large tric coefficient is two to three times larger than the d31
bandwidth and high-sensitivity [1]. Of the various types of piezoelectric coefficient. In this work, bulk micromachined
accelerometers, piezoelectric accelerometers offer high-Q accelerometers were designed and fabricated using silicon
(80–100), high output impedance, and low damping [2–4]. microfabrication methods. The devices utilized interdigi-
ZnO [5], AlN [6] and lead zirconate titanate (PZT) [6,7] tated (IDT) electrodes to achieve in-plane poling of the PZT
films have been employed in piezoelectric microaccelerom- films for exploiting the d33 -mode of operation [8]. A simple
eters and microsensors. Of these, PZT films exhibit the fabrication process involving only three photomasks along
highest piezoelectric coefficients and therefore offer the with two deep-trench reactive ion-etching (DRIE) steps was
opportunity for highest sensitivity. The piezoelectric coef- developed to fabricate the accelerometers.
ficients of thin film PZT are an order of magnitude larger
than those of ZnO and AlN [6]. In PZT, the magnitude of
the piezoelectric coefficient varies with the angle between 2. Accelerometer design
the applied stress and the poling direction. In a typical
accelerometer, the small out-of-plane motion of the proof In this work, an annular diaphragm design reported earlier
mass results in the development of an in-plane stress in was chosen (see Fig. 1) [7]. The annular structure has a proof
the accelerometer sensing membrane. In the case where mass of radius r1 (which was chosen to be 1 mm); this also
corresponds to the inner radius of the diaphragm while the
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-814-865-2730; fax: +1-814-865-7065. outer radius of the diaphragm is r2 . For small proof mass
E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Tadigadapa). deflections, if E is the Young’s modulus of the diaphragm

0924-4247/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0924-4247(03)00271-1
 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35 27

Fig. 1. Design of the interdigitated electrodes and the accelerometer: (a) shows the mask layout of the two capacitors located at the inner and outer
edges of the annular diaphragm and the three electrodes that are utilized for collecting charge separately, and (b) schematic cross-sectional view of the
accelerometer. r1 and r2 are outer and inner radii of the diaphragm, respectively.

material, ν is the Poisson’s ratio; the spring constant of the use a high piezoelectric coefficient material, and to use the
diaphragm structure can be written as [9–11] coefficients efficiently. Dense PbZr0.52 Ti0.48 O3 (PZT) films

  have d31 and d33 piezoelectric coefficients of about −45
  −1
F 8πD 1 r12 r12 r2 2 and 120 pC/N [12,13]. As can be seen from these values,
k= = 2 1− 2 −2 2 ln
wmax r2 2 r2 r2 − r12 r1 the d33 coefficient is desirable. For the annular design here,
out-of-plane deflection of the proof mass in response to an
(1)
acceleration will result in both radial and tangential stresses
where D is the flexural rigidity of the diaphragm and is in the plane of the diaphragm. Thus, interdigitated electrodes
defined as enable use of both d33 and d31 coefficients.
Use of interdigitated electrodes offers several other ad-
Eh3
D= (2) vantages in a sensor. Since the spacing of the electrodes
12(1 − ν2 ) rather than the thickness of the PZT film (for d31 -mode)
Assuming the outer radius of the diaphragm to be 2 mm determines the capacitance of the device, the impedance
and a wafer thickness of 460 ␮m, the required thickness of the accelerometer can be easily optimized by varying
of the membrane for a 20 kHz fundamental resonance was the electrode spacing. The PZT film thickness can now be
determined to be 31.5 ␮m. Silicon’s Young’s modulus of chosen to be as thin as is practical to get good, repeat-
160 × 109 Pa, and Poisson’s ratio of 0.28 were used in the able piezoelectric properties. Because the voltage sensitiv-
above calculation. Comparable calculations were made for ity is the charge sensitivity divided by the capacitance of
several diaphragm radii. the device, the low capacitance of the interdigitated struc-
Since the basic accelerometer structure was optimized to ture increases the voltage sensitivity of the accelerometer.
result in a large bandwidth, the sensitivity is expected to Although the voltage noise of the accelerometer goes up as
be comparatively small. In order to obtain a high-sensitivity the inverse of the square root of the capacitance, the voltage
from the accelerometer, it is therefore necessary both to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) still increases as the inverse of
28 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35

10

5
Stress (kPa)

0
1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

Radius (mm)
-5

-10

-15

Fig. 2. Stress distribution along the radial direction of the diaphragm with a rigid center. The inner radius is 1 mm and outer radius is 2 mm, and a
diaphragm thickness of 31.5 ␮m has been used in this calculation for a force of 1 g applied on the proof mass.

the square root of capacitance as the capacitance is decreased front-to-back side alignment and two DRIE steps. The three
[14]. mask levels consist of top electrode definition, backside
The radial stress (σ r ) in the annular diaphragm is plotted accelerometer frame (die size) definition, and backside
in Fig. 2. For a given annular diaphragm dimensions, it can proof mass area definition. The fabrication process flow is
be seen that the stress maximum occurs at the inner radius shown in Fig. 3. Diameter 4 in., n-type 1 0 0 (1–10 cm),
r = r1 and is 57% more than the stress at the outer radius. double-side-polished, silicon wafers having 0.5 ␮m SiO2
The tangential stress, σ t, where the electrodes lie, can be layers on them were used in this work. A 0.5 ␮m thick
approximated as ZrO2 layer followed by a 0.6 ␮m thick PZT layer was de-
posited by a sol–gel process [15]. The top metal layers of Cr
σt = νσr (3)
(20 nm) and Au (120 nm) were deposited via electron-beam
near the edges of the diaphragm [7]. It can also be seen and thermal evaporation, respectively on top of the PZT
from Fig. 2 that the stress induced by the applied accel- layer. All of the processes until this step are performed as
eration has opposite signs along the radial direction in the blanket depositions.
diaphragm near the proof mass and near the frame. There- The first photolithography step is a front-to-backside
fore, to maximize the sensor output, two separate interdigi- alignment. After development, the top Au and Cr layers were
tated electrode capacitors must be located in the vicinity of etched using a RIE etch process to form the interdigitated
the two clamped edges of the diaphragm where maximum capacitors on top of the PZT. In the fabrication of these de-
stresses occur. These separately located capacitors collect vices the PZT and ZrO2 layers were not patterned. Instead,
charge independently. As described previously [7], due to backside DRIE etch was used to define the accelerometer.
the opposite sign of the stress at the location of the two AZ4620 photoresist was spun up to a thickness of ∼13 ␮m
capacitors, the PZT must be poled in opposite directions to define the die frames, diaphragms, and proof masses of
such that the charge accumulated in each capacitor has the the annular structures. The first DRIE step performed in the
same polarity. For efficient charge collection, several pairs accelerometer frame areas determined the final thickness of
of electrodes forming capacitors connected in parallel over the diaphragms. The etch was performed for 25 min and
an area of the diaphragm are more efficient than a single ca- resulted in an etched depth of 30±1.5 ␮m. This was followed
pacitor over the same area. This is mainly because smaller by a buffered oxide etch (BOE) to remove the patterned
inter-electrode spacing allows for more efficient poling of oxide on the diaphragm areas, after which a second DRIE
the piezoelectric material while multiple capacitors increase step was used to etch through the wafer in the frame areas
the total charge collecting area. (Fig. 3). Visual end point detection was used. The deep
reactive ion etch over a wafer is not uniform and tends to
etch the edges of the wafer much faster than the center
3. Fabrication of the wafer in a radially symmetric pattern. The etch rate
varied by as much as 5–7% for the process conditions used
The interdigitated PZT MEMS accelerometers were [7]. Therefore, for a through wafer-etch, the thickness of
fabricated using three masks. The process required one the diaphragms produced was found to vary by as much as
 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35 29

Fig. 3. Schematic illustration of the fabrication process.

20–35 ␮m across the wafer. Fig. 4 shows optical images of Frequency response measurements were made using a
the fabricated accelerometers. calibrated reference sensor with a bandwidth of >25 kHz.
A schematic of the setup is shown in Fig. 5. An elec-
tromagnetic shaker generated the mechanical acceleration.
4. Measurements The accelerometer under test was glued with thick grease
on top of the reference accelerometer, which in turn was
Remanent polarization and coercive field of the PZT thin mounted firmly on the shaker table. The test accelerome-
films were obtained from P–E hysteresis measurement. For ters were packaged on a ceramic substrate. During packag-
the P–E hysteresis measurement, an RT66A standardized ing of the sensor, a little space between the proof mass of
ferroelectric test system in the virtual ground testing mode the accelerometer and the ceramic package substrate was
was used. A remanent polarization of ∼16 ␮C/cm2 and co- left to minimize the effect of squeeze damping effect aris-
ercive field of ∼35 kV/cm were obtained for the sol–gel de- ing from surrounding air. Therefore, small epoxy pedestals
posited PZT thin films, suggesting some process damage to were made on the package using the glue before mounting
the piezoelectric. the sensor on the substrate. The output signals from both
30 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35

mathematically,
Vtest (ω) 10Htest (ω)P(ω) 10Htest (ω)
R(ω) = = = (4)
Vref (ω) Href (ω)P(ω) Href (ω)
where R(ω) is the relative response function. The calibrated
sensitivity of the reference sensor was 0.43 pC/g. The abso-
lute sensitivity was then calculated.
Fig. 6 shows the ratio of the output of the test accelerom-
eter to the output of the reference accelerometer in the fre-
quency range of 1000–30,000 Hz. The sensitivity figure was
extracted from the flat low frequency region. Results from
the measurements showed a charge sensitivity in the range
of 0.13–0.67 pC/g. The frequency response also shows the
resonance frequency peak.
For, linearity measurement, a lock-in-amplifier was used
for measuring the output voltage of the reference and the
MEMS accelerometers. With the input drive signal of the
shaker table fixed at a frequency of 1 kHz, the input accel-
eration was gradually increased. Fig. 7 shows the output of
the accelerometer is linear in the 0–1.5 g acceleration range
and the slope of the straight line fit gives an average sen-
sitivity of 5.11 mV/g which compares quite well with the
sensitivity value of 5.3 mV/g calculated from the frequency
response measurement.
The frequency dependent impedance of the interdigitated
capacitors was measured using an HP 4194A impedance
Fig. 4. Optical picture of the accelerometer: (a) the front side with the analyzer at an excitation voltage of 0.5 V. Fig. 8 shows a typ-
interdigitated electrodes (see inset), and (b) shows the proof mass and ical impedance measurement result. The values of the reso-
the accelerometer frame.
nance frequency measured using this technique were within
5% of the values measured from the frequency response
measurements.
the test accelerometer and reference accelerometer were an- The piezoelectric coefficients are temperature dependent
alyzed using a SR 785 dynamic signal analyzer. Before the in PZT films. Therefore, changes in temperature are expected
signal was connected to the analyzer, the charge signals to manifest as output signals. In order to experimentally
from the test accelerometer and the reference accelerome- measure the temperature dependence of the signal output
ter were converted to voltage signals. The signal from the on temperature, the frequency response measurement was
accelerometer under test was amplified by a factor of 10. performed inside a chamber, the temperature of which could
Since the input force function from the shaker table was be varied between 0 and 100 ◦ C. The frequency response
common to both the reference and test accelerometers, the measurement was performed at five different temperatures
measured voltage ratio is a direct measurement of the Sen- and the accelerometer along with the shaker table was al-
sitivity function H(ω) of the test accelerometer. Expressed lowed enough time at each temperature to reach temperature

Fig. 5. Schematic of the setup for the frequency response measurement, A and B are charge amplifiers. The reference accelerometer and the test
accelerometer are mounted on top of each other.
 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35 31

Fig. 6. Frequency response of an accelerometer with a resonance frequency of 24.1 kHz and sensitivity of 0.53 pC/g.


9 10 1 k
Output voltage (mV) fresonance =
9 2π M
8 
Sensitivity (mV/g)
7 8 (8πD/r22 )[(1/2)(1 − (r12 /r22 ))

Output Voltage (mV)

1
−2(r12 /(r22 − r12 ))(ln(r2 /r1 ))2 ]−1
Sensitivity (mV/g)

7
6
6 =
5 2π M
5
4 (5)
4
3
3
2
where M is the mass of the accelerometer proof mass. To
Slope=5.11mV/g 2
compare the experimentally measured resonance frequen-
1 1 cies with those predicted using Eq. (5), the devices with the
0 0 same r1 /r2 ratios were separated. Fig. 8 shows the results of
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 the measured and predicted resonance frequencies. A closer
Acceleration(g)=x9.81m/s2
look at the two graphs shows that the measured resonance
Fig. 7. Acceleration versus voltage output at 1 kHz. The plot shows the frequencies for all the devices are slightly higher than those
linearity of the MEMS accelerometer. Error is in the range of 8%. predicted, even after accounting for a membrane thickness
error of ±3 ␮m. It is known that when ZrO2 /PZT thin films
equilibrium. The measurement performed on a single ac- are deposited on oxide coated silicon wafers using chemi-
celerometer showed ∼0.3%/◦ C sensitivity variation in the cal solution deposition, a tensile stress is generated in these
0–100 ◦ C temperature range. films. For 2 ␮m thick film-stacks the magnitude of this stress
has been measured to be ∼100 MPa [16]. A tensile stress in
the diaphragm arising from these tensile layers is expected
5. Discussion to increase the resonance frequency of the accelerometer. To
account for the net in-plane internal tensile stress σ, the su-
5.1. Frequency response of the accelerometers perposition principle was used whereby an additional term
to the bending resistance due to internal stress was added. It
Since the accelerometer can be represented as a sim- was found that this resulted in a very minor change (∼0.5%),
ple spring mass system, the resonance frequency of the ac- implying that for a 20–35 ␮m thick silicon membrane, with
celerometer can be given by 2 ␮m thick 100 MPa tensile ZrO2 /PZT layer, the overall
32 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35

26
Experimentally Measured
24 Theoretically Predicted
Resonance Frequency (kHz)

Resonance Frequency with residual stress

22 Resonance Frequency with reduced diaphragm

20

18

16

14

12

10
17 22 27 32 37
(a) Membrane Thickness (um)

26 Experimentally Measured
Theoretically Predicted
Resonance Frequency (kHz)

Resonance Frequency with residual stress

24
Resonance Frequency with reduced diaphragm

22

20

18

16

14

12
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
(b) Membrane Thickness (µm)

Fig. 8. Resonance frequency vs. membrane thickness plot (a) for r1 /r2 = 1.8 and (b) r1 /r2 = 2.0 devices. As can be seen from Eq. (5), the resonance
frequency varies as h1.5 . Resonance frequencies considering residual stress in the PZT film and non-uniform thickness are also plotted. The dashed line
is a linear fit to the measured resonance frequency data.

stiffness of the structure is dominated by the flexural rigidity the corrected values of r1 and r2 and ignoring the ∼20 ␮m
of the plate rather than by the stress in the film layers. of thickness variation over the width of the diaphragm. A
Observation of the diaphragms from the etched side of the comparison of the predicted resonance frequencies versus
plate revealed that the thickness of the annular diaphragms thickness using the corrected values of diaphragm radius is
was not uniform in the radial direction. A flattened arch also plotted in Fig. 8. The reduced diaphragm radius model
shaped variation in the thickness of the diaphragm was ob- predicts the resonance frequency within experimental error.
served in the radial direction as shown in the optical inter-
ferometer profile of the diaphragm in Fig. 9. The optical 5.2. Sensitivity of the accelerometers
interferometer profile shows that thickness variation across
the membrane is at least 20 ␮m. Also it was observed that In order to predict the sensitivity, the average values of the
at the edges of the diaphragm no thickness data could be radial stress and tangential stress at each capacitor location,
measured. This normally indicates that the gradient of the arising from 1 g of force acting on the proof mass, were
slope in this edge region is increasing very rapidly and there- calculated. The total charge Q generated from 1 g of force
fore has the effect of reducing the width of the annular di- is given by
aphragm. From Fig. 9, this reduction in the width (r2 − r1 ;
 
Fig. 1) of the annular diaphragm is ∼100 ␮m (50 ␮m from Q= Qi = (d33 σr,i + d31 σt,i )Ai (6)
each edge). The resonance frequency was predicted using i i
 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35 33

Fig. 9. Surface profile of the etched side of the accelerometer membrane. As can be seen the diaphragm has a flattened arch shaped in cross-section with
(A) 20 ␮m thicker than the middle of the membrane (B). The thickness profile at the edges of the diaphragm could not be obtained and is estimated to
be about 0.05 mm.

It should be noted that because the d33 and d31 coefficients thickness for the two types of accelerometers. In general,
have opposite signs, the two contributions partially cancel. In the measured sensitivity is higher than the predicted values
Fig. 10, the sensitivity calculated using the expression above and is overall a surprising result since any imperfections in
is compared with the measured sensitivity as a function of the PZT film and misalignments are expected to only lower
these values. The remnant polarization of the PZT film in
this work, which is much lower than that in similar PZT
1.2
film, shows that there are problems in the processing of the
Measured sensitivity electrode.
1
Predicted sensitivity in d33 model Although the discrepancy between the observed sensi-
Sensitivity (pC/g)

0.8
tivity and the predicted sensitivity could not be exactly
quantified, these differences are thought to arise due to three
0.6 main reasons namely: (i) the assumption that the piezoelec-
tric material under the electrode area was “dead” and does
0.4 not contribute to the output signal, (ii) imperfect mounting
of the accelerometer resulting in actuation of higher modes
0.2 of vibration, and (iii) local imperfections. In this work, the
areas under the electrode were treated as dead areas (not
0 contributing to the output signal). Since the total area under
18 23 28 33
the electrode is comparable to the total spacing area, some
(a) Thickness (um)
errors in the predicted sensitivities can be expected by ig-
1.2
noring the contributions from the “dead areas”, if these were
Measured sensitivity
at all piezoelectrically active. Additionally, cross-sensitivity
Predicted sensitivity with d33 model measurement on the accelerometers showed ∼4 times big-
ger values than that of the d31 mode accelerometers with
Sensitivity (pC/g)

0.8 identical mechanical design and dimensions [7], which may

imply that the accelerometers was not mounted properly.
The effect of a tilted accelerometer is considered as one of
the factors which causes high cross-sensitivity and variabil-
0.4 ity in the overall sensitivity in the various accelerometers.
When acceleration is imparted at some arbitrary angle with
respect to the normal direction of the accelerometer, the
movement of the proof mass results in a more complicated
0 stress profile. Also, local non-uniformities (notches) were
16 21 26 31 observed in the diaphragm. These irregularities were formed
(b) Thickness (um) on the backside of the diaphragm during DRIE step. These
Fig. 10. Comparison between measured sensitivity and predicted sensi- non-uniformities are expected to cause concentrated local
tivity: (a) r1 /r2 = 1.8; (b) r1 /r2 = 2.0. stresses, which can result in high-sensitivity.
34 H.G. Yu et al. / Sensors and Actuators A 107 (2003) 26–35

Table 1
Comparison of the capacitance, charge sensitivity, voltage sensitivity of the d33 - and d31 -mode accelerometers with similar resonance frequencies
r1 /r2 ratio IDT electrodes d31 -mode of operationa

Resonance Capacitance Sensitivity (pC/g Resonance Capacitance Sensitivity

frequency (kHz) (pF) or mV/g) frequency (kHz) (nF) (pC/g or mV/g)
0.55 15.8 102 0.514 (5.3) 12.3 2.5 1.53 (0.61)
17.1 91.5 0.486 (4.8) 17.8 2.5 0.5 (0.20)
0.5 15.5 78 0.613 (6.5) 21.1 2 0.53 (0.21)
23.1 78 0.53 (6.0) 22.0 2 0.47 (0.19)
a Calculated from [16].

6. Comparison between d 31 - and IDT-accelerometers with the same structure, the interdigitated electrode ac-
celerometer was ∼10 times better in voltage sensitivity.
In order to compare the performance of d31 - and The resonance frequency of the accelerometers was ex-
interdigitated-mode accelerometers, devices with identi- plained by using the bending stiffness model for a circular
cal proof mass and diaphragm shape and dimensions with plate with a rigid center. Correction to the size of the an-
parallel plate capacitor configuration (d31 -mode) and inter- nular diaphragm size arising due to etch non-uniformity
digitated capacitor configuration were fabricated. Table 1 accounted for the observed difference between the observed
compares the capacitance, charge and voltage sensitivity and measured resonance frequencies. Contributions from
of interdigitated and d31 -mode accelerometers with similar these two modes were considered to predict the sensitivity
resonance frequencies. As can be seen from Table 1, the of the accelerometer assuming the proof mass was deflected
capacitance of the d33 -mode accelerometers was about 20 perfectly out-of-plane. However, this model underestimated
times smaller than the capacitance of the d31 -mode ac- the overall sensitivity. The discrepancy between the ob-
celerometers. This difference was achieved by using 10 ␮m served sensitivity and the predicted sensitivity could not
interdigitated electrode spacing in the interdigitated-mode be exactly quantified and was thought to arise due to three
accelerometers and ∼10 concentric ring capacitors con- main reasons namely: (i) the assumption that the piezoelec-
nected in parallel. The results on the d31 -mode accelerome- tric material under the electrode area was “dead” and does
ters used here for comparison are from the earlier reported not contribute to the output signal, (ii) imperfect mounting
results by Wang et al. [7,17]. of the accelerometer resulting in actuation of higher modes
The charge sensitivity of the interdigitated-mode ac- of vibration, and (iii) local imperfections. An improved
celerometers is similar to d31 -mode accelerometers. It fabrication process resulting in a more uniform membrane
can also be seen from Table 1 that for devices with thickness and understanding of the poling efficiency and
similar resonance frequencies (implying accelerometers direction throughout the PZT film in the electroded area is
with similar membrane thickness) those operating in the required for further investigation into the performance of
interdigitated-mode show ∼20 times higher voltage sensi- these devices and will be continued as part of future work in
tivities. The high voltage sensitivity is due to the ∼20 times this area.
smaller capacitance of the interdigitated-mode accelerom-
eters (since voltage sensitivity = charge sensitivity/device
capacitance) as compared to the d31 -mode accelerometers. Acknowledgements
In terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) the performance of
the interdigitated-accelerometers is therefore superior to that The project was funded by grants from the National In-
of the d31 -accelerometers. This is because the voltage noise stitute of Standards and Technology WR-ATP-0001 and the
of the accelerometer goes up as the inverse of the square National Science Foundation DMR-0102808.
root of the capacitance, while the voltage signal increases
as the inverse of the capacitance resulting in a net increase
in SNR as the inverse square root of the capacitance. There- References
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