Fabrication and characterisation of microscale hemispherical shell resonator with diamond electrodes on the Si substrate

Abstract

A self-aligned fabrication method is employed for microscale hemispherical shell resonator with integrated diamond electrodes on a silicon (Si) substrate. The millimetre-scale three-dimensional (3D) hemispherical shell resonator, with integrated electrostatic excitation and capacitive detection transducers for full control of the resonator, is fabricated on the Si substrate by employing a microelectromechanical systems process. The eight integrated diamond electrodes evenly distributed outside the hemispherical shell are fabricated using a self-aligned method, which ensures uniform capacitive gap along the whole circumference. The Boron-doped polycrystalline diamond, a material with low thermo-elastic damping and low surface losses to reach the high quality, is used as the millimetre-scale 3D hemispherical shell resonator with integrated electrodes. The fabrication process enables the production of almost perfect hemisphere mould (<2% roundness variation) with an average surface roughness of 3 nm. Vibration modes and frequencies are carried out by a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer; the elliptical mode frequency is determined to be at 81.3 kHz, with the two M = 2 degenerate modes having a relative frequency mismatch of 0.86%. This process can be further optimised to fabricate high-quality and full-symmetric microscale hemispherical resonator gyroscopes in batch.