Development of miniaturized 6-axis accelerometer utilizing piezoresistive sensing elements

This paper reports a novel miniaturized piezoresistive 6-axis accelerometer designed and fabricated using bulk micromachining technology. Accelerometer consists of highly symmetric single crystalline silicon crossbeam structure with 20 conventional two-terminal p-type piezoresistors diffused on the surface of the beams. This accelerometer measures three components of linear acceleration and three components of angular acceleration on three orthogonal axes simultaneously. The average measured sensitivities of the fabricated sensor for linear accelerations and angular accelerations show a cross-axis sensitivity of <4%. Comparison of the obtained experimental results and finite element simulation shows good agreement. The sensor is ideal for use in biomechanical research applications such as human gesture recognition systems.