Mems accelerometer utilizing thin film mechanical resonators and integrated photonics

A method comprising:

• providing a micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometer comprising a proof mass having a first side and an opposing second side, a first trampoline resonator spaced apart and connected to the first side, and a second trampoline resonator spaced apart and connected to the second side;
• providing a photonic chip operatively connected to the MEMS accelerometer, the photonic chip including a planar lightwave circuit (PLC) layer comprising a routing waveguide arrangement, a first photonic grating coupled with the routing waveguide arrangement, and a second photonic grating coupled with the routing waveguide arrangement;
• routing laser light through the routing waveguide arrangement to the first photonic grating and the second photonic grating;
• projecting the laser light from the first photonic grating in a first collimated beam toward the first trampoline resonator;
• projecting the laser light from the second photonic grating in a second collimated beam toward the second trampoline resonator;
• creating an optical lattice standing wave by reflected light from a bottom surface under the first and second trampoline resonators, wherein a fraction of laser power incident on the first and second trampoline resonators is reflected, picking up frequency modulated sidebands that directly encode a mechanical frequency comb spectrum;
• and
• recoupling the reflected light, incident on the first and second photonic gratings, into the routing waveguide arrangement to travel backwards and exit the PLC layer for optical detection and sensor processing.