A High Sensitivity Electric Field Microsensor Based on Torsional Resonance

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2018-01, Vol.18 (1), p.286
• Main Authors: Chu, Zhaozhi, Peng, Chunrong, Ren, Ren, Ling, Biyun, Zhang, Zhouwei, Lei, Hucheng, Xia, Shanhong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Charge efficiency; Efficiency; efficiency of charge induction; electric field microsensor; Electric fields; Electrodes; Electrostatic shielding; Linearity; MEMS; Micromachining; Sensitivity; torsional resonance
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s18010286

This paper proposes a high sensitivity electric field microsensor (EFM) based on torsional resonance. The proposed microsensor adopts torsional shutter, which is composed of shielding electrodes and torsional beams. The movable shielding electrodes and the fixed sensing electrodes are fabricated on the same plane and interdigitally arranged. Push-pull electrostatic actuation method is employed to excite the torsional shutter. Simulation results proved that the torsional shutter has higher efficiency of charge induction. The optimization of structure parameters was conducted to improve its efficiency of charge induction further. A micromachining fabrication process was developed to fabricate the EFM. Experiments were conducted to characterize the EFM. A good linearity of 0.15% was achieved within an electrostatic field range of 0-50 kV/m, and the uncertainty was below 0.38% in the three roundtrip measurements. A high sensitivity of 4.82 mV/(kV/m) was achieved with the trans-resistance of 100 MΩ, which is improved by at least one order of magnitude compared with previously reported EFMs. The efficiency of charge induction for this microsensor reached 48.19 pA/(kV/m).