1994 IEEE INTERNATIONAL FREQUENCY CONTROL SYMPOSIUM

MONOLITHIC QUARTZ STRUCTURE

VIBRATING BEAM ACCELEROMETER

(VBA)

William C. Albert Crystal Gage, Inc. Boonton, NJ 07005

ABSTRACT This paper describes an accelerometer for which the vibrating beam sensor, the vibration isolation system, the proof mass, the proof mass suspension system, and the mounting means are all machined from a single rectangular quartz crystal blank. As such, this sensor represents a significant advancement in combining the sensor art with the quartz crystal resonator art. The design uses the well-known force-frequencymodulation effect of vibrating a beam in axial tension or compression. INTRODUCTION The use of frequency-modulated vibratory sensors has always been attractive in accelerometer as well as other sensor applications due to the inherentdigital nature of the output signal without need for A/D conversion. When the sensor material used is quartz crystal, high stability of bias frequency and scale factor is realized as well as low temperature sensitivity. Inaddition, the piezoelectric property of quartz crystalprovides a simple means of sustaining vibrations using an oscillator circuit, electrically connected to electrodes plated onthe resonator. A uniquefeature of the patented design isits two thickness structure. This allows the mass, mass suspension and mount requirements of the relatively thick outer structure be independent of the sensitivity to requirements of the relatively thin vibrating beam inner structure.This simple yet powerfuldesign approach allows the concept to be applied to both high g low sensitivity and low g high sensitivity applications. A plated metalization pattern leads from the mount portion of the structure to electrodes on the vibrating beam. A simple piezoelectric shear drive is used to sustain the beam flexure vibrations. The monolithic quartzstructure is "mini-machined" using ultrasonic machining, as opposed to photo-etch micro-machinedtechniquesusedon DETF quartz or 415 0-7803-1945-1/94 $3.00 0 1994 IEEE

silicon sensor applications. Since the structure is a .l" x . 6 x .7" rectangular "quartz sensor chip", it lends itself to IC packaging and sealing techniques. The oscillator circuit may be packaged along with the "chip" or remain external. Depending onthe application, many packaging options are possible. The use of quartzresonatorsinsensors(primarily pressure sensors and accelerometers) is not new. However,previoussensor designs usedassemblies of several quartz parts or a combination of quartz and metal The parts. design being presented uses a monolithic quartz structure. The following paragraphs will describe the construction and operation the quartz structure of beginning with the Qinnermost vibrating flexure beam, through the maintaining isolation mechanism and end a with description of the proof mass and mounting means of the outer portion of the structure. The advantages of the unique feature of having the thickness of the inner and outer sections markedly different will also be discussed. The piezoelectric drive will then be covered, followed by a description of packaging. All design aspects of this sensor stresssimplicity and producibility for a high performance-to-cost ratio. Since the paper concentrates on quartz resonator design, machining and packaging, details on performance will not be discussed. An exception temperature is sensitivity performance because it differs from what is normally experienced from quartz flexure resonators. DESCRIPTION Figure 1 illustrates the basic sensing means which is the well-known force-frequency(F-f)effect of a flexure beam in axial tension or compression. Figure 1also describes the vibratory distinction between a beam and a string, specifically that the beam has a no-load resonant frequency and can also respond to compression, as well as the force effect on the crystal equivalent circuit. A more detailed discussion of the F-f effect appears in the Appendix.

FREOUENCY

The vibratingbeam and itsisolator system comprisethe inner structure of the overall structure shown in Figure 3. Note that without the inner structure in place, the flexure beams would permit x-axis motion of the proof m s with respect to the mount portionof the structure. as Therefore, the sensing portion inner structure isplaced in tension orcompression in response to anacceleration along the input axis. The use of a mount appendage insures that the errorproducing mounting stresses are nottransmittedtootherportions of thestructure. Successful mounting has beenachieved using epoxy, solder and mechanical fasteners.
OUTER STRUCTURETHICKNESS INNER STRUCTURE THICKNESS

[-F) COMPRESSION

? I
BIAS TENSION
-MOUNT

TENSION t+FI

FIGURE 1 FORCE-FREQUENCY (F-f)EFFECT OF A VIBRATING FLEXURE BEAM Without a means isolation to maintain a high Q, the beam of Figure 1 is not practical. A typical simple isolation means is shown in Figure 2 and operates as follows. The vibrating beam is actually a virtual f i e d Tied beam, since there is some linearandangular displacement at the beam roots. By design, this root motion is kept small and is on the order of 1% the of maximum linear and angular displacements. Since the isolator mass reaction to M and V is primarily inertial, the relativephasing is as shown in Figure 2. The V overall result is that the M m and , reactions at the much less than M and V outer structure will be respectively which prevents energy loss. Typical Q is on the order of 20,000 or more.
VIRMTINC BEAM

PROOF MASS

---4

FIGURE 3

FLEXURE BEAM

MONOLITHIC QUARTZ STRUCTURE

A key feature of the design is the marked difference

between the thickness of the outer and innerportions. The following comments apply: For almost all applications, a single thickness structure is not practical because for a reasonable overall geometry, the sensitivityand isolation requirements of the inner structure cannot be made compatible with the mass, mounting and cross-axis stiffness requirements of theouter structure. Having two different thicknesses introduces a high degree of design flexibility that completely decouples the relative design requirements of the two portions so that high g, low g and high crossaxis g requirements can allbe accommodated. The outer to inner thickness ratio is typically 8:l.

ISOLATOR BEhM

kr- I

- = - -__

_- --_ -

ISOLATOR MASS

FIGURE 2 VIBRATION ISOLATOR TO " I A N HIGH Q 416

The various fabrication steps leading up toa completely machined and metalized structureare illustrated in

Figure 4. Ultrasonic machining is the primary fabrication means. Overall dimensions are .l x .6 x .7 inches.

DEFLECTION
p

T(x)

SHEAR (V) DISTRIDUTION

ELECTRODE PAWERN

osc.

FIGURE 4 FABRICATION STEPS QUARTZ BLANK TO MJ3TALIZATION

D
PIEZOELECTRICALLY INDUCED SHEAR DlSTRlDUTION

>

FIGURE 5
PIEZOELECTRIC FLEXURE DRIVE FLEXURE DRIVE AND METALIZATION PATTERN The piezoelectric flexure drive uses the well known Y-cut shear drive['] described in Figure 5. It's operation is as follows: The displacement distribution of a fured-fixed fundamental flexure vibration mode is shown in Figure 5-A.
From thethird derivative of y with respect to x, the shear stress distribution is shown in Figure 5B.

Because the shear strain energy is small compared to the flexure strain energy, the electrical-to-mechanical coupling is low for theshear drive, resultingina relatively high R, on the order of 0.5 megohms. Figure G illustrates how the deposited metalization on the z surface of the outer structure leads tothe

Figure 5-Cshows the electrode pattern along with the piezoelectric shear effect. This drive usesthe d,, piezoelectric coefficient whereby an electric field in they direction causes a shear stress about the z axis. Figure 5-D shows the piezoelectrically induced shear stress distribution. Note that itis in phase with Figure5-B and thereforewill drive the beam at its fundamental frequency when connected to an oscillator. This type of drive was selected because it is simple and the electrodes are easily placed on the Y surface of the thin (0.004 in.) beam. Because of the thin ribbon-like geometry of the beam, a direct X-cut flexure drive electrode pattern was considered too difficult to apply using conventionalmasking andplatingtechniques.
417

electrodes, which are deposited on the Y surfaces of the vibrating beam. The electrode phasing is as shown in Figure 5-C. PACKAGING Since thequartzstructure can be thought of as a rectangular "g-sensitive chip", it lends itself very nicely to IC packaging techniques as shown in Figure 7. IC packaging techniques are welldeveloped and use low cost formed enclosures with very reliable glass-to-metal feedthrough seals. The seam weld or solder lid sealing techniques are also highvolumelow cost operations. The packages are usually evacuated but canalso be back filled with a partial atmosphereof inert gas.

MONOLITHIC VBA CHARACTERISTICS Theinstrument described differs from conventional accelerometers and also many other VBA designs in the following ways: The basic sensing element is not an assembly and therefore error producing sources such as joints and dissimilar materials are eliminated. Thesensor design and packaging are verysimple and the overall parts count is very low for low cost. Thequartzsensoroperatesina vacuum andis therefore undamped. This greatly simplifies the design and construction by eliminating critical damping gaps and the error sources associated with squeeze film damping. All structure resonances are designed to be well above 2 kHz. Vibration tests on engineering prototypes to 15 g along all three axes revealed no and 2 kHz resonances and no failures. It is the small size of the quartz structure that results in the very high resonant frequencies and eliminates the need for a damping mechanism. It is well known that the resonant frequency and shock capability of a given structure design geometry is generally inversely proportional to its size. Future generation monolithic VBA designs will be even smaller. Other characteristics of the individual resonator, as well as the dual beam VBA appear in Table 1.

IC PACKAGE

SENSOR (SCHEMATIC1

LID

FIGURE 7 "g-SENSITIVE CHIP" PACKAGING While for some low accuracy applications the package of Figure 7 can be used directly, VBA's usually employ two unitsina push-pull arrangement so thatan input acceleration places one beamin tensionand the other in compression. Theoutput is taken as the difference frequency. This dual beam mechanization and the reasons for ita use are described in the Appendix. A typical dual beam package arrangement is illustrated in Figure 8. Because of the versatility of the basic IC packaging technique many other arrangementsare also possible.

TABLE 1 TYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS

INTMVIDUALBEAM

B M (Afd2kI)
SCALE FACTOR
TWO UACK-TOUACK SENSO11
I'ACKACES WlTll

10 g Per % fo Mismatch 52 Hzlg

END COVEll

o cIu I 3 s I. mE

IlOUSlNG 1- U x 'L L

28TC U SCALE FACTOR TC

418

13 .

60 pepC per "C Turnover Mismatch 10 P P W C

pg/2 per 96

Mismatch

FIGURE 8

DUAL BEAM VBA PACKAGE

PERFORMANCE The dual beam VBA is intended for applications requiring 1 mg bias and 100 ppm scale factor stability and input up 50g. Single beam devices can beused in to less stringent applications. With better quartz and quartz processing along a with more sophisticated oscillator and temperature control, there is no reason why the designcannot qualify for 10 cc.g and 1 ppm applications. More details on performance will appear in future papers. One performance characteristic of special interest was temperature sensitivity. The bias frequency versus temperature characteristics exhibited the classic Turnover parabola as illustrated in Figure 9. temperature was -15 C. Of significance was the observed second order sensitivity of -25(lO-)PC? For other flexure resonators (X-cut and Y-cut), this sensitivity istypically - 5 ( O P . is suspected that 4 l - ) @It the second order temperature sensitivity of the outer structure, as well as that of the vibrating beam, combined to result in the lower than expected value. Where:

S=as-

L* Eh3

The beam geometry, vibration mode, and boundary conditions are described by Figure Al.

E and p are respectively the elastic modulus and density of the beam material.
The dimensionless constant a and 8s are , respectively 1.026 and 0.294 for f in Hz, the fundamental vibration mode, and the fiied-fixed boundary conditions.
t

9 fo

FIGURE A1 FIXED-FIXED VIBRATING B UNDER AXIAL FORCE

Another useful relationship obtained by applying the is binomial expansion to Equation M.

S 2 S* 8

f=fo(l+-F--F

* *

FIGURE 9 TEMPERA= S E N S m

For an accelerometer application, F = mg where m is mass and g is acceleration. When the indicated substitutions are made Equation 4A becomes: f=fo+k,g-Sg2. . .

APPENDIX

A previously published Rayleigh methodsolution of the

frequency-force effect of a vibratin flexure beam resulted in the following equations Dl b . l

D a Beam Accelerometer ul Mechanization

Figure A2 is a schematic representation of dual beam operation where an input acceleration places one beam in tension and the other incompression. Equations 6A thru BA describe analytically and Figure A3 graphically the behavior of the individual beam and difference frequencies. (Note the additional subscript to denote beam number as well as coefficient order. Also note that higher than second order termsare neglected.)

f =fo&3F

Where:
f o = a o $P L p

(U)

419

FREQUENCY f

ig
FIGURE A2

ACCELERATION g

DUAL BEAM PUSH-PULL

IVIECHANTZATION

FIGURE A3

DUAL BEAM
FREQUENCY BEHAVIOR

For beam one in tension:

For beam two in compression:

(1)

Cady, Walter G., Piezoelectricitv. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1946, pp 448-449. Albert, "Force W.C., Sensing Using Quartz Crystal Flexure Resonators". Proceedinm of the 38th Freauencv ControlSvmDosium, 1984, pp

fi=fm-k128+W

(74

(2)

The difference frequency now 233-239. becomes:

Af=

A-&= fO1-fm

1 +k&

(1&)gZ 4-

(U)

(3)

Albert, WC., 'Vibrating Quartz Crystal Beam Accelerometer", ISA 28th International Symposium, Vol. 28, No. 1, 1982, pp 33-44.

Frequency differencing achieves the following: The bias frequency (fol - L) becomes small. More importantly, the benefit common of mode rejection (CMR) of bias frequency thermal driftis achieved since both essentially identical crystals will havesimilar temperature sensitivities.Other error sources are also reduced by CMR. Thedominant first order scale factor (kll + kl& becomes double that of an individual resonator. The most dominant nonlinearity term (hl L) - is greatly reduced by cancellation for improved linearity.
420

'f

fo,

--