Conti Temic Microelectronic Gmbh

Continental Teves, Ag and Company Ohg

Bei Technologies, Inc.

Konrad Kapser

Hai Yan

Helmut Seidel

Ulrich Prechtel

Roland Burghardt

Matthias Rose

Peter Knittl

Manfred Weinacht

Bernhard Hartmann

Sebastian Toelg

A micromechanical capacitive acceleration sensor is described for picking up the acceleration of an object in at least one direction. The sensor includes a frame structure (), a sensor inertia mass () made of a wafer and movably mounted relative to the frame structure () about a rotation axis, and a capacitive pick-up unit () for producing at least one capacitive output signal representing the position of the sensor mass () relative to the frame structure (). The sensor inertia mass () has a center of gravity which offset relative to the rotation axis in a direction perpendicularly to a wafer plane for measuring accelerations laterally to the wafer plane. The sensor mass () and the frame structure () are made monolithically of one single crystal silicon wafer. A cover section () forms a common connector plane () for the connection of capacitor electrodes (). Torqueable elements () form an electrically conducting bearing device for the sensor mass ().

Micromechanical capacitive acceleration sensor

Micromachined vibratory gyroscope having two or more coplanar movable masses suspended over a planar substrate. Two perpendicular axes (x and y) are defined within the substrate plane, while a third, the z-axis or input axis, is defined to be perpendicular to the substrate plane. The movements of the two masses along the x-axis are coupled through an electrostatic coupling means so that the natural resonant frequency of the in-phase mode and that of the anti-phase mode are separated from each other for the resonances along the x-axis. When the two masses are driven to vibrate along the x-axis in the anti-phase mode and the device experiences rotation about the z-axis, Coriolis forces act differentially on the masses in the Y-direction, causing the two masses to dither in an anti-phase motion along the y-axis. The anti-phase dithering along the y-axis can be sensed directly by a rate sensor to measure the rate of rotation about the z-axis. Alternatively, the anti-phase dithering of the first and second bodies along the y-axis can be transferred to other movable bodies (i.e., rate-sensing masses) whose movement is then sensed to measure the rate of rotation about the z-axis. The sensing bodies are preferably suspended in such manner that, in the absence of Coriolis forces, the x-axis motion of the vibrating masses does not affect the sensing bodies. That inhibits motion of the sensing bodies in response to linear acceleration within the plane of the substrate, but permits those bodies to respond readily to the Coriolis-induced motion about an axis perpendicular to the substrate plane.

Micromachined vibratory gyroscope with electrostatic coupling

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Munich, Germany

Konrad Kapser