Optomechanical Gyroscope Based on Micro-Hemispherical Shell and Optical Ring Resonators

Silicon photonic integrated circuits and micro-electro-mechanical systems enable the design of compact, high-performance micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS) gyroscopes, such as recently reported optomechanical gyroscopes. However, effective on-chip light coupling within a confined micro/nano system under vacuum posed challenges for conventional angular velocity measurements in prior optomechanical gyroscopes. Additionally, A core challenge in resonant gyroscopes is directly measuring resonant frequency displacement, necessitating alternative angular velocity detection techniques. Alternatively, this work presents the design of a novel optomechanical gyroscope based on the micro-hemispherical shell resonator integrated with optical ring cavity resonators. This integrated optomechanical device combines the principles of shell resonators and optical ring cavity resonators to enhance gyroscope performance. The high-Q optical ring resonators coupled via evanescent fields from the on-chip silicon waveguide, serve as the basic building block. Overall, the gyroscope design utilizes principles of both mechanical resonators and integrated photonics to address challenges in on-chip light coupling and angular velocity detection for next-generation optomechanical inertial sensors. Numerical simulations demonstrated the optomechanical micro-hemispherical shell resonator gyroscope could attain a calculated scale factor of 77.9 mV/(°/s) and total angle random walk of 0.0662 °/h
^1/2
for a micro-hemispherical shell mass of 212 ng at an input laser power of 5 mW. These performance metrics suggest the proposed integrated optomechanical gyroscope design holds promise for applications requiring chip-scale inertial navigation, attitude measurement, and stabilization.