Hi, I am Mithlesh Kumar, a PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. I work as a research associate at Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India. Currently I am working on design and analysis of closed-loop MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope.

I have experience in the design, simulation, fabrication, and characterization of capacitive MEMS devices. Presently, I am working on a project titled “Design and analysis of high accuracy MEMS accelerometers and gyroscope for closed-loop sensing” as a Research Associate at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India. In my Ph.D., I have worked on performance improvement of capacitive MEMS devices and their application as accelerometers and electrostatic energy harvesters. I have also worked on RF MEMS switches during my master’s research program.

Development of inertial grade microelectromechanical system (MEMS) requires low noise floor of the order 100 μg/√Hz, g-range of the order of ± 20 g, bandwidth of around 300 Hz, low power consumption of around 25 mA [1] and high scale factor [1]. Most of the conventional accelerometers are limited by slow drifts and random walk related errors which require additional temperature compensation and differential cancellation electronics. Such additionally electronics not only required more power but they may become ineffective under unfavourable condition [2]. Thus, focus has now shifted to mode localization based sensing.

Reference
  1. Chris Murphy, “Choosing the Most Suitable MEMS Accelerometer for Your Application—Part 1, Analog Dialogue 51-10, 1-6 Pages, October 2017.
  2. Milind Pandit, Chun Zhao, Guillermo Sobreviela, Arif Mustafazade, Sijun Du, Xudong Zou, and Ashwin A. Seshia, "Closed-loop characterization of noise and stability in a mode-localized resonant MEMS sensor," in IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 170-180, Jan. 2019, doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2018.2878241.

MEMS Accelerometer

A Novel Design for Enhancing the Sensitivity of a Capacitive MEMS Device

Sensitivity of a capacitive MEMS device mainly depends on gap variation across the interdigitated electrodes for an applied acceleration. In conventional design, gap variations across the inter-digitated electrodes are typically due to the displacement of the movable electrodes attached to a movable mass whereas, the fixed electrodes remain static. In this work, a novel design of secondary-mass-spring assembly is proposed to tilt the fixed electrodes along with the displacement of the moving electrode for applied acceleration such that the capacitive sensitivity is enhanced. The proposed structure is fabricated by SOIMUMPs process. The differential arrangement of inter-digitated electrodes nullifies the cross-axis sensitivity.

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