A Double Differential Torsional Accelerometer with Higher Than 10kHz Measurement Bandwidth for Vibration Monitoring

This paper reports the design, fabrication, ASIC, package, and characterization of a z-axis accelerometer with double differential torsional configuration. Compared with typical comb structures, diagonally large depth non-penetrating quad-mass has a simple structure with a large feature size. Compared with traditional unbalanced proof mass structures, the fully differential sensitive configuration theoretically eliminates the influence of common mode errors such as interference force and temperature variations. Thus a high performance structure with high sensitivity and good stability was obtained. Meanwhile, the anchor was arranged internally to make the structure more compact and less stress sensitive. The sensitive structure has a size of 2.4mm×1.8mm. An optimization of kinetic properties was done to get large bandwidth and small mechanical thermal noise. The ASIC of the double differential torsional structure was implemented, which adopted single-cycle clock double-edge multiplexing to improve C/V conversion efficiency and reduce circuit noise. At the same time, the error compensation technology used on the ASIC makes the accelerometer sensitivity error less than 1% and zero bias error less than ±0.02V. The resonance frequency is about 16kHz, the ±5% bandwidth is larger than 10kHz, the cross-axis sensitivities of the x-axis and y-axis are less than 1.5% and 1%, respectively, the bias instability is less than 700μg, the noise spectral density is better than 30μg/√ Hz above 10Hz, the normalized drift over the full temperature range (-40 °C to 60 °C ) is less than 1.78g under uncompensated conditions.