A novel thermal-bubble-based micromachined accelerometer

A novel micromachined accelerometer based on thermal-bubble technology is proposed and demonstrated in this work. Unlike the other techniques, the only moving element in the accelerometer is a small thermal-bubble created by using a high flux heater to vaporize the liquid contained in the micro-chamber. The basic physical characteristics including the heat transfer and fluid flow behavior of this sensor have been analyzed and discussed. The feasibility and performance of the proposed accelerometer are verified using numerical simulations and demonstrated experimentally using a designed test setup. The results conclude that the presented design has better response and higher sensitivity comparing to its counterparts.