A novel bulk micromachined gyroscope with slots structure working at atmosphere

Abstract

Abstract Design, fabrication and testing of a novel silicon micromachined gyroscope prototype with slots structure are presented. The device structure which we called “slots gyroscope” consists of a proof mass with slots linked up to substrate by suspend springs and is fabricated by silicon–glass bonding and deep reactive ion etching (DRIE). The gyroscope makes use of electrostatic driving and capacitive sensing. As the proof mass used as the movable electrodes is parallel to the plane of fixed driving and sensing electrodes, there is only slide film damping in the driving and sensing mode. The gyroscope can operate at atmospheric pressure due to almost same high quality factor in the sensing direction and driving direction. The experiment result shows that the drive and sense mode resonant frequencies are 460.4 and 549.6 Hz, respectively, and the quality factor of the drive and sense are 102.5 and 106.5, respectively at atmospheric pressure. The scale factor and non-linearity of the micromachined gyroscope are 20 mV/(° s) and 0.56%, respectively at atmospheric pressure.