A ${\rm Z}$ -Axis Quartz Tuning Fork Micromachined Gyroscope Based on Shear Stress Detection

This paper proposes a novel quartz micromachined gyroscope. The structure is designed by using shear stress detection method which can simplify the sidewall electrodes obviously. Furthermore, a tuning fork is introduced by the structure to obtain better differential vibrations. In order to increase the sensitivity of the sensor, the sense beam is designed to be a symmetric tapered beam. The device was fabricated using quartz anisotropic wet etching process. The drive mode frequency is 14.99 kHz, and the quality factor is 7600 in air. The sense mode frequency is 14.25 kHz, and the quality factor is 600 in air. Therefore, this gyroscope can operate at atmosphere pressure properly. The sensor is tested on a rate table through a specially designed readout circuitry. The sensitivity is 23.9 and the nonlinearity is 1.1% in range of . The noise floor is 0.1 .