A novel piezoresistive accelerometer structure with axially stressed self-supporting sensing beams was presented in this paper.

Based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, we derived theoretical model for the location of the sensing beams, stresses and resonant frequency.

The finite element method simulations were carried out to verify our model, including the condition of achieving the purely axial stress, cross-axis sensitivity and other performances.

The accelerometer was fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator wafer and characterized by the static and dynamic experiments.

Compared with other accelerometers in the literatures, the developed accelerometer exhibited an excellent performance concerning a comprehensive figure of merit.