Study of first-order thermal ΣΔ architecture for convective accelerometers

• Published in: 2008 Symposium on Design, Test, Integration and Packaging of MEMS/MOEMS pp. 100 - 104
• Main Authors: Leman, O., Mailly, F., Latorre, L., Nouet, P.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Grenoble IEEE 01.04.2008; EDA publishing
• Subjects: Acceleration; Accelerometers; Applied sciences; Bandwidth; Bridge circuits; Circuit properties; CMOS technology; Delta-sigma modulation; Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing; Detectors; Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits; Electronic circuits; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; General equipment and techniques; Instruments, apparatus, components and techniques common to several branches of physics and astronomy; Integrated circuits; Mathematical model; Measurements common to several branches of physics and astronomy; Metrology, measurements and laboratory procedures; Physics; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Sensors (chemical, optical, electrical, movement, gas, etc.); remote sensing; Signal convertors; Temperature sensors; Thermal sensors; Velocity, acceleration and rotation; Performance evaluation; Closed loop; Modulator; Measurement sensor; Thermal behavior; Feedback regulation; BioMEMS; Sigma-delta modulation; Engraving; Feedback; Complementary MOS technology; First order; Accelerometer
• ISBN: 2355000069; 9782355000065
• DOI: 10.1109/DTIP.2008.4752961

This paper presents the study of an original closed-loop conditioning approach for fully-integrated convective inertial sensors. The method is applied to an accelerometer manufactured on a standard CMOS technology using an auto-aligned bulk etching step. Using the thermal behavior of the sensor as a summing function, a first order sigma-delta modulator is built. This ldquoelectrophysicalrdquo modulator realizes an analog-to-digital conversion of the signal. Besides the feedback scheme should improve the sensor performance.