The Effect of the Anisotropy of Single Crystal Silicon on the Frequency Split of Vibrating Ring Gyroscopes

This paper analyzes the effect of the anisotropy of single crystal silicon on the frequency split of the vibrating ring gyroscope, operated in the n = 2 wineglass mode. Firstly, the elastic properties including elastic matrices and orthotropic elasticity values of (100) and (111) silicon wafers were calculated using the direction cosines of transformed coordinate systems. The (111) wafer was found to be in-plane isotropic. Then, the frequency splits of the n = 2 mode ring gyroscopes of two wafers were simulated using the calculated elastic properties. The simulation results show that the frequency split of the (100) ring gyroscope is far larger than that of the (111) ring gyroscope. Finally, experimental verifications were carried out on the micro-gyroscopes fabricated using deep dry silicon on glass technology. The experimental results are sufficiently in agreement with those of the simulation. Although the single crystal silicon is anisotropic, all the results show that compared with the (100) ring gyroscope, the frequency split of the ring gyroscope fabricated using the (111) wafer is less affected by the crystal direction, which demonstrates that the (111) wafer is more suitable for use in silicon ring gyroscopes as it is possible to get a lower frequency split.