A Novel Comb Architecture for Enhancing the Sensitivity of Bulk Mode Gyroscopes

This work introduces a novel architecture for increasing the sensitivity of bulk mode gyroscopes. It is based on adding parallel plate comb drives to the points of maximum vibration amplitude, and tuning the stiffness of the combs. This increases the drive strength and results in a significant sensi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 13; no. 12; pp. 16641 - 16656
Main Authors Elsayed, Mohannad, Nabki, Frederic, El-Gamal, Mourad
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 04.12.2013
Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
Subjects
bulk-mode
Electrodes
MEMS
resonant gyroscopes
sensitivity enhancement
Sensors
Canada
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Summary:This work introduces a novel architecture for increasing the sensitivity of bulk mode gyroscopes. It is based on adding parallel plate comb drives to the points of maximum vibration amplitude, and tuning the stiffness of the combs. This increases the drive strength and results in a significant sensitivity improvement. The architecture is targeted for technologies with ~100 nm transducer gaps in order to achieve very high performance devices. In this work, this sensitivity enhancement concept was implemented in SOIMUMPs, a commercial relatively large gap technology. Prototypes were measured to operate at frequencies of ~1.5 MHz, with quality factors of ~33,000, at a 10 mTorr vacuum level. Measurements using discrete electronics show a rate sensitivity of 0.31 μV/°/s, corresponding to a capacitance sensitivity of 0.43 aF/°/s/electrode, two orders of magnitude higher than a similar design without combs, fabricated in the same technology.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s131216641