Foucault pendulum on a chip: angle measuring silicon MEMS gyroscope

We report detailed characterization of a vacuum sealed angle measuring silicon MEMS gyroscope. The new gyroscope utilizes completely symmetric, dynamically balanced quadruple mass architecture, which provides a unique combination of maximized quality (Q) factors and isotropy of both the resonant frequency and the damping. The vacuum sealed SOI prototype with a 2 kHz operational frequency demonstrated virtually identical X- and Y-mode Q-factors of 1.1 million. Due to the stiffness and damping symmetry, and very low dissipation, the gyroscope can be instrumented for direct angle measurements with fundamentally unlimited rotation range and bandwidth. Experimental characterization of the mode-matched gyroscope operated in whole-angle mode confirmed linear response in excess of ±450 °/s range and 100 Hz bandwidth (limited by the setup), eliminating both bandwidth and range constraints of conventional MEMS rate gyroscopes.

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