Influence of the Flexure Position and a Thick Gold Film on the Performance of Beam-Mass Structures

In the present work, we realize a miniaturized piezoresistive accelerometer with high magnitude of prime-axis signal and a very low cross-axis signal. Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the electro-mechanical response of three structures with different flexure positions and an electroplated gold layer. Of the three structural configurations, one structure with the proof mass-edge-aligned-beams and an electroplated gold film has better performance with lesser real estate consumption. Experimental results show that a fabricated sensor depicts around 20% improvement in the prime-axis signal and a maximum reduction of 7.6% in the cross-axis signal compared to other structures.