A novel micro accelerometer with adjustable sensitivity based on resonant tunneling diodes

Resonant tunnelling diodes (RTDs) have negative differentialresistance effect, and the current--voltage characteristics changeas a function of external stress, which is regarded asmeso-piezoresistance effect of RTDs. In this paper, a novel micro-accelerometer based on AlAs/GaAs/In_0.1Ga_0.9As/GaAs/AlAsRTDs is designed and fabricated to be a four-beam-mass structure,and an RTD-Wheatstone bridge measurement system is established totest the basic properties of this novel accelerometer. According tothe experimental results, the sensitivity of the RTD based micro-accelerometer is adjustable within a range of 3 orders when the biasvoltage of the sensor changes. The largest sensitivity of this RTDbased micro-accelerometer is 560.2025 mV/g which is about 10 timeslarger than that of silicon based micro piezoresistiveaccelerometer, while the smallest one is 1.49135 mV/g.