Mitigating rim bending in fused silica micro shell resonators by a chamfered mold

Abstract

In this work, we addressed the bending of a micro shell resonator’s rim toward the stem during glass-blowing process. This phenomenon occurs due to increased heat loss at the mold’s edge and reduced heat flux at the side of the Gaussian heat source. To mitigate rim bending and the subsequent reduction in capacitance between the rim and 3D electrodes, which can degrade performance in micro glass-blown shell resonators for gyroscopes, we propose two potential mold solutions, using short-stem mold and chamfered mold. To quantitatively compare resonators created by these two types of molds, we calculated the noise factor for predicting its gyroscope performance. From these calculations, we find out that using the chamfered mold enables us to increase in the resonator’s effective mass, eigenfrequency, angular gain, and quality factor, consequently reducing the noise factor compared to using the short-stem mold. We also demonstrated these results by manufacturing shell resonators and measuring its vibrational characteristics. After metalization of the glass shell resonator, Q factor and eigen frequency of n = 2 vibration mode along the primary (secondary) axis were measured to 622,466 ± 6,427 (619,793 ± 6,402) and 4,343 ± 40 Hz (4,350 ± 40 Hz), respectively. This simulation process will assist us in getting insight into understanding a shell resonator as a gyroscope, designing a mold and determining experimental conditions.