Analysis and Design of Super-Sensitive Stacked (S3) Resonators for Low-Noise Pitch/Roll Gyroscopes

We report a novel stacked balanced resonator structure and present the design of MEMS pitch/roll gyroscopes that utilize this stacked resonator. In this structure, two similar device layers are stacked, thus providing a balanced vertical resonator with significantly reduced anchor loss for out-of-plane (Le., the plane where the two resonators are attached) motion. Reducing the anchor loss allows one to increase the thickness of resonator layers, which leads to smaller thermoelastic dissipation and larger effective mass. A large-scale model of a stacked resonator is fabricated and tested, which proves that out-of-plane Q can be improved by when resonators are stacked. The design of a new stacked pitch/roll gyroscope is also presented and our analysis shows that this novel design could potentially provide noise of ~ 1.5×10
^-10°
/√hr.