Design and experimental demonstration of electromagnetic actuation utilized on micrograting accelerometers

This paper presents the design, analysis, and experimental demonstration of electromagnetic actuation utilized on micrograting accelerometers. It mainly consists of a permanent magnet and a driving coil made of three planar printed circuit board coils. A silicon movable platform and the permanent magnet with an axial magnetization of 750 × 10³ form the proof mass. The eight cantilever beams and the movable platform are made by means of the etching process, and the aluminum micrograting is fabricated by the lift-off process. Experimental data show that the electromagnetic force can reach 1.41 mN when the driving voltage is about 2.96 V. The linear operating region of the accelerometer is [-1 g,1 g] under a driving voltage of -2.8 to 2.96 V. A mean sensitivity of 2.82 V/g is obtained by three repeated feedback experiments. In addition, a linear operating region of [-2.2 g,2.2 g] is calculated when the driving voltage is [-7 V,7 V]. There is a linear relation between the driving voltage and the input acceleration.