Single-chip 3D electric field microsensor

Abstract

This paper presents a single-chip 3D electric field microsensor, in which a sensing element is set at the center to detect the Z-axis component of an electrostatic field. Two pairs of sensing elements with the same structure are arranged in a cross-like configuration to measure the X- and Y-axis electrostatic field components. An in-plane rotary mechanism is used in the microsensor to detect the X-, Y-, and Z-axis electrostatic field components simultaneously. The proposed microsensor is compact and presents high integration. The microsensor is fabricated through a MetalMUMPS process. Experimental results show that in the range of 0–50 kV/m, the linearity errors of the microsensor are within 5.5%, and the total measurement errors of the three electrostatic field components are less than 14.04%.

Keywords

electric field microsensor / three-dimensional / single-chip / in-plane rotation

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61327810) and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Project) (Grant No. 2015AA042602).ƒ

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