Optical fiber accelerometer based on MEMS torsional micromirror

A novel structure of optical fiber accelerometer based on MEMS torsional micro-mirror is introduced, including MEMS torsional micro-mirror and optical signal detection. The micro-mirror is a non-symmetric one, which means that the torsional bar supporting the micro-mirror is not located in the axis where the center of the micro-mirror locates. The optical signal detection is composed of PIN diode and dual fiber collimator, which is very sensitive to the coupling angle between the input fiber and output fiber. The detection principle is that acceleration is first transformed into torsional angle of the micro-mirror, then, optical insertion loss of the dual fiber collimator caused by the angle can be received by PIN. So under the flow of acceleration to torsional angle to optical signal attenuation to optical power detection, the acceleration is detected. The theory about sensing and optical signal detect of the device are discussed in this paper. The sensitive structure parameters and performance parameters are calculated by MATLAB. To simulate the static and modal analysis, the finite element analysis, ANSYS, is employed. Based on the above calculation, several optimization methods and the final structure parameters are given. The micro-mirror is completed by using silicon-glass bonding and deep reactive ion etching (DRIE). In the experiment, the acceleration is simulated by electrostatic force and the test results show that the static acceleration detection agrees with the theory analysis very well.