Characterization of Sandia Capacitive Comb-finger MEMS Accelerometers

Joshi, Aaditi ( Arizona State University)
Redkar, Sangram ( Arizona State University)
Sugar, Thomas ( Arizona State University)

Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics
Vol 4, No 4: December 2015

This paper discusses various methods for testing the performance of MEMS capacitive comb-finger accelerometers manufactured by Sandia National Laboratories. The use of Capacitive MEMS devices requires complex circuits for measurement of capacitance and the Sandia MEMS accelerometer’s capacitance changes in a very small femto-farad (fF) range. The performance of accelerometer is tested using Analog Devices AD7747 sigma-delta capacitance to digital converter. The response of a MEMS capacitive accelerometer to various tests is useful for testing and characterization and investigate it’s suitability for various applications.