Technology- Thermal MEMS Accelerometers
MEMSIC's Thermal MEMS Accelerometers are used in millions of new automobiles, phones, cameras, projectors, appliances, and a variety of other applications annually.
This technology is unique to MEMSIC, as the first and only company to integrate a MEMS inertial sensor and signal processing circuitry together on a standard monolithic CMOS wafer.
The thermal MEMS accelerometer is based on the principle of convection of heated gas molecules within a sealed cavity. Highly accurate temperature sensors can detect the change in temperature profile resulting from very small changes in acceleration (or inclination). This technology has a number of unique properties and benefits:
- There are no moving parts. The "proof mass" in this accelerometer consists of heated molecules of gas.
- This means there is no detectable resonance, which makes these sensors virtually immune to out-of-band vibration and shock.
- These devices are extremely robust and reliable, providing shock tolerance of 50,000g (nearly an order of magnitude greater than many competing devices).
- There is no possiblity of "stiction" as in sensor types measuring capacitance between mechanical beams.
- Thermal accelerometers have exceptionally good zero-g offset stability with time and temperature, and have virtually undetectable thermal hysteresis (an effect which is commonly experienced with many other accelerometer types, and typically limits the ability to measure small accelerations or tilt angles).
To learn more about the technology, you can download the Thermal Accelerometer Whitepaper....
To view our accelerometer product line, click here...