Numerical and experimental investigation on contactless resonant sensors

This paper reports numerical and experimental investigation on a (bulk and etch silicon on insulator) BESOI MEMS device. The implemented contactless actuation principle, exploits Lorentz forces exerted on a conductive-non magnetic surface of the sensor. These forces derive from the interaction between the eddy-currents and the radial magnetic field, both generated by a sinusoidally driven external inductor. Both excitation and readout strategies are performed remotely via a magnetic strategy. The sensor proposed here has been first analytically and numerically studied by using CoventorWare (TM) 2008, then the device prototype has been fabricated and a preliminary experimental campaign has been performed to characterize the system in terms of variation of its resonance frequency against changes in the sensor mass. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.