Résumé
A two-axis MEMS magnetometer with integrated signal processing has been developed for a micro-compass application. The fabrication process is fully industrial and relies on bulk wet etching of CMOS dies. This technology offers cost- effective batch fabrication. Earth magnetic field measurement is achieved using piezoresistive gauges on a cantilever beam actuated by means of the Lorentz force. Due to low signal level available across the gauges, on-chip amplification with very high gain and low noise is then required. A fully differential amplifier based on a differential pair is suitable for this application. Circuit design approach is discussed in this paper. The obtained performances in terms of noise are compared to an instrumentation amplifier. Finally, a sensing resolution of 0.9 μT is demonstrated with such a differential amplifier instead of 2.1 μT resulting from standard-cell based instrumentation amplifier.