Design, Fabrication and Experiment of Double U-Beam MEMS Vibration Ring Gyroscope

Abstract

This study presents a new microelectromechanical system, a vibration ring gyroscope with a double U-beam (DUVRG), which was designed using a combination of mathematical analysis and the finite element method. First, a ring vibration resonator with eight double U-beam structures was developed, and 24 capacitive electrodes were designed for drive and sense according to the advantageous characteristics of a thin-shell vibrating gyroscope. Then, based on the elastic mechanics and thin-shell theory, a mathematical stiffness model of the double U-beam was established. The maximum mode resonant frequency error calculated by the DUVRG stiffness model, finite element analysis (FEA) and experiments was 0.04%. DUVRG structures were manufactured by an efficient fabrication process using silicon-on-glass (SOG) and deep reactive ion etching (DRIE), and the FEA value and theoretical calculation had differences of 5.33% and 5.36% with the measured resonant frequency value, respectively. Finally, the static and dynamic performance of the fabricated DUVRG was tested, and the bias instability and angular random walk were less than 8.86 (°)/h and 0.776 (°)/√h, respectively.