Microfabrication Process-Driven Design, FEM Analysis and System Modeling of 3-DoF Drive Mode and 2-DoF Sense Mode Thermally Stable Non-Resonant MEMS Gyroscope

Abstract

This paper presents microfabrication process-driven design of a multi-degree of freedom (multi-DoF) non-resonant electrostatic microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscope by considering the design constraints of commercially available low-cost and widely-used silicon-on-insulator multi-user MEMS processes (SOIMUMPs), with silicon as a structural material. The proposed design consists of a 3-DoF drive mode oscillator with the concept of addition of a collider mass which transmits energy from the drive mass to the passive sense mass. In the sense direction, 2-DoF sense mode oscillator is used to achieve dynamically-amplified displacement in the sense mass. A detailed analytical model for the dynamic response of MEMS gyroscope is presented and performance characteristics are validated through finite element method (FEM)-based simulations. The effect of operating air pressure and temperature variations on the air damping and resulting dynamic response is analyzed. The thermal stability of the design and corresponding effect on the mechanical and capacitive sensitivity, for an operating temperature range of −40 °C to 100 °C, is presented. The results showed that the proposed design is thermally stable, robust to environmental variations, and process tolerances with a wide operational bandwidth and high sensitivity. Moreover, a system-level model of the proposed gyroscope and its integration with the sensor electronics is presented to estimate the voltage sensitivity under the constraints of the readout electronic circuit.

A Low-g MEMS Accelerometer with High Sensitivity, Low Nonlinearity and Large Dynamic Range Based on Mode-Localization of 3-DoF Weakly Coupled Resonators

“…The temperature dependent properties of the material and thermal stresses affect the performance parameters of MEMS accelerometer. The temperature dependent variation in the material properties specially the Young’s modulus is very less with a 0.016% shift in value with respect to room temperature in the temperature range of 40 °C to 85 °C [ 32 , 33 ]. Thus, the effect of temperature dependent variation in Young’s modulus is ignored in the subsequent discussion.…”

Random Error Reduction Algorithms for MEMS Inertial Sensor Accuracy Improvement—A Review

“…The MEMS inertial device is mainly composed of a basic beam, spring, and mass block. The MEMS inertial device is easily influenced by temperature, rotation speed, attached mass, instant temperature field, material distribution, geometry, and dimension size [ 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 ], resulting in structure stress concentration, thermal stress, unstable resonant frequency, and other adverse phenomena. Therefore, in order to better design the MEMS/NEMS device, it is necessary to consider stress release, temperature insensitivity, geometric structure, scale effect, driving/detection mode, appropriate non-classical parameters, and rod model [ 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 ].…”

A Dual-Mass Resonant MEMS Gyroscope Design with Electrostatic Tuning for Frequency Mismatch Compensation

“…The Young's modulus of the silicon structural material, which was used to design the proposed MEMS gyroscope, changes with temperature and this results in changes in the resonant frequency values. The analytical expression for the effect of operating temperature on Young's modulus value of the silicon material is given as [27]:…”