A Z-Axis Quartz Cross-Fork Micromachined Gyroscope Based on Shear Stress Detection

Sensors

Liqiang Xie¹  Xuezhong Wu²  Shengyi Li²  Haoxu Wang²  Jianbin Su² 

[1] College of Mechatronics Engineering and Automation, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, Hunan Province, China;

关键词: quartz micromachined gyroscope;    cross-fork;    shear stress detection;    inertial sensor;    Coriolis’ force;    anisotropic etching;    aperture mask;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s100301573

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Here we propose a novel quartz micromachined gyroscope. The sensor has a simple cross-fork structure in the x-y plane of quartz crystal. Shear stress rather than normal stress is utilized to sense Coriolis’ force generated by the input angular rate signal. Compared to traditional quartz gyroscopes, which have two separate sense electrodes on each sidewall, there is only one electrode on each sidewall of the sense beam. As a result, the fabrication of the electrodes is simplified and the structure can be easily miniaturized. In order to increase sensitivity, a pair of proof masses is attached to the ends of the drive beam, and the sense beam has a tapered design. The structure is etched from a z-cut quartz wafer and the electrodes are realized by direct evaporation using the aperture mask method. The drive mode frequency of the prototype is 13.38 kHz, and the quality factor is approximately 1,000 in air. Therefore, the gyroscope can work properly without a vacuum package. The measurement ability of the shear stress detection design scheme is validated by the Coriolis’ force test. The performance of the sensor is characterized on a precision rate table using a specially designed readout circuit. The experimentally obtained scale factor is 1.45 mV/°/s and the nonlinearity is 3.6% in range of ±200 °/s.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2010 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.