Miniaturized quartz vibratory gyrosensor with hammer-headed arms

A newly designed vibratory gyrosensor using a quartz crystal was developed for electronic image stabilizing technology in video cameras and digital camera systems. These systems require low driving voltage for low power consumption and small size for compact assembly. Conventional gyrosensors for these systems use the PZT ceramic vibrator, which is too large to be assembled into recent digital camera systems. Rapid miniaturization was achieved of the developed quartz gyrosensor with a 2mm square size vibrator. The crystal impedance of the vibrator was reduced to less than 40k ohm using hammer-headed arms embedded in a vacuum-sealed package. This can be applied to various mobile electronic systems because larger vibrating displacement can be obtained at lower voltage. As it is used in the tuning fork of the oscillators, it is easy to fabricate in mass production at low cost, which is required for the electronics industry. In this paper, the optimization of the design of the gyrosensor is discussed. The vibratory gyrosensor with full hammer-headed shaped resonators is proposed. The sensor (0.1mm thick) was fabricated using a quartz crystal showing promising performance for electronic mobile applications.