Elastomeric Composites to Reduce the Effects of Trunnion Mode in Inertial Devices

摘要

Polymer composites have long been known for their ability to combine the properties of dissimilar materials to create properties ideally tailored for an application. We propose applying these features to MEMS in order to reduce the effects of cross-axis coupling in inertial sensors. By forming aligned composites to create structures rigid in-plane while remaining compliant along the sensitive axis of a MEMS structure, we attempt to reduce the detrimental effects of the trunnion vibrational mode not desirable in unilateral sensors. We model the dynamics of such a system and demonstrate that the use of aligned composites reduces the effects of the trunnion mode by increasing the system's resistance both to angular disturbances and to angular deformation excited by the sense mode due to fabrication imperfections.