Initial Demonstration of an Inductive Vibrating Ring Gyroscope Fabricated from Fused Silica

This letter presents a fused silica inductive vibrating ring gyroscope (IVRG). The resonator of the gyroscope is fabricated on a 4-inch fused silica wafer. Benefiting from the technique of laser-induced assisted etching (LIAE), the microstructures on the fused silica wafers have an extremely high aspect ratio of 60.2 and the average roughness of the sidewall is 0.41 μm. The voltage can be directly extracted from the resonator without performing a C/V converter. This device has a Q factor of 1007196 and 1104764 and a resonant frequency of 17950.77 Hz and 17950.86 Hz after vacuum packaged. Although the gyroscope has a maximum angle-dependent bias drift of 0.42 °/s when operated in the rate-integration mode, the angle tracking error is only 4.3° (34.1ppm) after 30 seconds high-speed rotation test.