Development of MEMS Reed Magnetic Sensors

In this paper, a 3-D multiphysics finite-element study of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) reed magnetic sensors is presented. This paper employs several governing equations to simulate the MEMS reed sensors, calculate their magnetostatic body force, and track the resultant mechanical displacements. The MEMS beams used are trilayer gold/Ni/gold, and the sensing ranges of the sensors are in milli-Tesla. The results in this paper point to an optimal sensor design, which is then fabricated and verified by the experimental tests. This paper presents a general performance map of the MEMS reed sensors, illustrating their performance under various field conditions. Several sensor devices are fabricated and tested, with the measured data showing good agreement with the simulation results.