A high-Q in-plane SOI tuning fork gyroscope

This paper presents the design and implementation of an in-plane solid-mass single-crystal silicon tuning fork gyro that has the potential of attaining sub-deg/hr rate resolutions. A design is devised to achieve high Q in the drive and sense resonant modes (Q_drive=81,000 and Q_sense=64,000) with effective mode decoupling. The gyroscope was fabricated on 40 μm thick silicon-on-insulator (SOI) using a simple two-mask process. The drive and sense resonant modes were balanced electrostatically to within 0.07% of each other and the measured rate results show a sensitivity of 1.25 mV/°/s in a bandwidth of 12 Hz.