A doubly decoupled lateral axis micromachined gyroscope

In this paper, a doubly decoupled x-axis gyroscope with novel torsional sensing comb capacitors is presented. The doubly decoupled design is more efficient to suppress mechanical coupling of gyroscope. Both driving and sensing modes of the gyroscope are dominated by slide film air damping, therefore, it can work even at atmospheric pressure. Moreover, the sensing capacitors adopt asymmetrical comb fingers so that they can differentially detect out-of-plane torsional movements. The fabrication process of the gyroscope is compatible with z-axis gyroscope process, which makes it potential to realize low cost monolithic MIMU (miniature inertial measurement unit) without vacuum packaging. The gyroscope was fabricated and tested. The sensitivity is 22 mV/°/s while the nonlinearity is 2.19% at atmosphere. The noise floor is 0.02°/s/Hz1/2.