Design and Development of a Low-Power Wireless MEMS Lead-Free Piezoelectric Accelerometer System

In this article, a complete 3-D integrated sensing system intended for practical applications was presented on a printed circuit board (PCB) board, starting with lead-free piezoelectric films deposited using an RF sputtering system, an MEMS structure design/simulation, device fabrication, and a signal processing chip design, including charge- to-voltage transformation, signal amplification, 60-Hz noise rejection, and low-power RF wireless transmission chip for remote monitoring. Both the signal processing chips and the RF wireless transmitter chips were manufactured using the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) CMOS process. The piezoelectric coefficient d33 was measured as 27.21 pm/V of the proposed ZnO:Li doped Mg (MLZO) films. To meet the frequency specifications of industrial applications, the ring-structure devices with a 7730-Hz resonance frequency were designed using ANSYS simulation software. There was only a 0.39% deviation compared to the simulation results with the actual experimental data. The measurement results of the proposed system showed that the acceleration detection range was approximately 137 mV/ g (p-p). The voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) adopted in the wireless transmitter chip had a four-leaf clover structure inductor with two symmetrical axes resulting in better suppression of magnetic field radiation. Finally, this system was applied to industrial spindles, and the normal and abnormal operation information of spindles was successfully and wirelessly monitored.