Vol. 123, Issue 12, December 2010, pp.1-15

Development of Electromechanical Architectures for AC Voltage Metrology

¹Alexandre BOUNOUH, ¹François BLARD, ^{2, 3}Henri CAMON, ¹Denis BELIERES

¹ LNE – 29 avenue Roger Hennequin, 78197 Trappes, France

² CNRS-LAAS, 7 avenue du colonel Roche, F-31077 Toulouse, France

³ Université de Toulouse; UPS, INSA, INP, ISAE; LAAS; F-31077 Toulouse, France

E-mail: alexandre.bounouh@lne.fr, camon@laas.fr

Received: 22 July 2010   /Accepted: 21 December 2010   /Published: 28 December 2010

Abstract: This paper presents results of work undertaken for exploring MEMS capabilities to fabricate AC voltage references for electrical metrology and high precision instrumentation through the mechanical-electrical coupling in MEMS. From first MEMS test structures previously realized, a second set of devices with improved characteristics has been developed and fabricated with Silicon on Insulator (SOI) Surface Micromachining process. These MEMS exhibit pull-in voltages of 5 V and 10 V to match with the best performance of the read-out electronics developed for driving the MEMS. Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy measurements carried out on the new design show resonance frequencies of about only some kHz, and the stability of the MEMS output voltage measured at 100 kHz has been found very promising for the best samples where the relative deviation from the mean value over almost 12 hours showed a standard deviation of about 6.3 ppm.

Keywords: MEMS Design, SOI Process, Electrical metrology, Voltage Reference

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