A single-crystal silicon vibrating ring gyroscope

This paper reports a high-performance vibrating ring gyroscope fabricated in [111] oriented single-crystal silicon (SCS). High-performance microgyroscopes are needed in many applications, including inertial navigation, control, and defense/avionics/space. The ring gyroscope provides a number of advantages, including excellent mode matching, high-resolution, low zero-rate output, and long-term stability. In this paper, a SCS vibrating ring gyroscope with a high aspect ratio silicon on glass structure was designed, fabricated and tested. The ring is 2.7 mm in diameter and 150 /spl mu/m thick. The gyro has the following measured performance: high Q (12000), good nonlinearity (0.02%), large sensitivity (132 mV//spl deg//sec), low output noise (10.4/spl deg//hr//spl radic/(Hz)) and high resolution (7.2/spl deg//hr). The maximum bias shift is less than /spl plusmn/1/spl deg//sec over 10 hours without thermal control.