Shock-Resistibility of MEMS-Based Inertial Microswitch under Reverse Directional Ultra-High g Acceleration for IoT Applications

This paper presents a novel MEMS-based inertial microswitch design with multi-directional compact constraint structures for improving the shock-resistibility. Its shock-resistibility in the reverse-sensitive direction to ultra-high g acceleration (~hunderds of thousands) is simulated and analyzed. The dynamic response process indicates that in the designed inertial microswitch the proof mass weight G, the whole system's stiffness k and the gap x2 between the proof mass and reverse constraint blocks have significant effect on the shock-resistibility. The MEMS inertial microswitch micro-fabricated by surface micromachining has been evaluated using the drop hammer test. The maximum allowable reverse acceleration, which does not cause the spurious trigger, is defined as the reverse acceleration threshold (athr). Test results show that athr increases with the decrease of the gap x2, and the proposed microswitch tends to have a better shock-resistibility under smaller gap. The measured responses of the microswitches with and without constraint structure indicates that the device without constraint structure is prone to spurious trigger, while the designed constraint structures can effectively improve the shock-resistibility. In this paper, the method for improving the shock-resistibility and reducing the spurious trigger has been discussed.