Effect of -ray irradiation on performance of LiNbO₃-based piezoelectric vibration sensors

¹ Science and Technology on Electronic Test and Measurement Laboratory, North University of China No. 3 Xueyuan Road, 030051, Taiyuan, China
² Shanxi Key Laboratory of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, North University of China No. 3 Xueyuan Road, 030051, Taiyuan, China
³ Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences No. 181 Second Kexue Street, 830011, Urumqi, China

^(a) wenpinggeng@nuc.edn (corresponding author)
^(b) chauxiujian@nuc.edu.cn

Received: 8 October 2021
Accepted: 15 November 2021

Abstract

LiNbO₃ (LN)-based micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) vibration sensors exhibit giant perspectives in extreme environments, where a great amount of irradiation exists. However, to the best of our knowledge, it is still unknown whether the irradiation affects the performance of LN-based piezoelectric MEMS sensors. Based on this consideration, it is necessary to model the irradiation environment to investigate the effect of high-dosage irradiation on LN-based vibration sensors. Firstly, the theoretical work is done to study the Compton effect on the gamma-ray irradiation with a ⁶⁰Co source. After irradiation, X-ray diffraction (XRD) characterization is performed to verify the effect of irradiation on the crystalline of LN thin film. Meanwhile, the performances of output voltages on the five MEMS devices under various dosage of irradiation are compared. As a result, a neglected shift of 0.02 degrees is observed from the XRD image only under maximum irradiation dosage of 100 Mrad(Si). Moreover, the output voltages of cantilever beam vibration sensors decrease by 3.1%. Therefore, it is verified that the -ray irradiation has very little influence on the LN-based MEMS vibration sensors, which have great attraction on the materials and sensors under high-dose irradiation.