SBIR Phase I: Commercialization of low-cost micro birdbath resonant gyroscope

该项目更广泛的影响/商业化潜力是满足广泛应用对小型、低成本和高精度角速度和角方向传感器(也称为陀螺仪)的需求。陀螺仪是许多新兴应用所需要的，例如用于立方体卫星、自动驾驶车辆、无人机和高端可穿戴电子设备等小卫星的惯性测量单元。这些应用需要价格相近(10美元)的陀螺仪，但精度要比目前智能手机中使用的陀螺仪高约1万倍。鸟缸谐振器陀螺(BRG)是一种新型的微电子机械系统(MEMS)陀螺，与现有的硅陀螺相比，具有更好的谐振质量和机械对称性，具有很强的应用潜力。BRGS的经济影响将是巨大的，因为许多行业可以利用高性能陀螺仪来监控其系统的动态，提供位置感知，并改进这些系统的其他部分的性能。低成本和高性能陀螺仪的问世将使用户能够进一步了解其应用，并探索其在广泛社会需求中的局限性和适用性。该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在开发一种新的批量级微制造技术，以实现熔融石英低成本、超高性能MEMS陀螺仪的商业化。今天可用的陀螺仪要么精度高，但体积大，价格昂贵(例如：半球谐振式陀螺仪)，要么体积小，价格便宜，但不准确(例如，智能手机陀螺仪)。研究中的高精度硅MEMS陀螺仪体积小、精度高，但价格昂贵。这是因为硅具有低的机械谐振品质因数(Q)，因此很难制造出高成品率的高精度陀螺仪。BRG是一种由熔融石英制成的陀螺仪，具有成本低、体积小、性能高的特点。它的熔融二氧化硅微机械谐振器可以实现比硅高得多的Q值，这使得BRG能够以高成品率制造。BRG制造过程使用喷灯将熔融二氧化硅衬底回流成型为尺寸从几十微米到几毫米的三维中空壳，具有很高的几何精度。拟议的研究将显著提高我们对规模、设计和工艺对BRG性能的关系以及详细工艺参数、成品率和成本重复性之间的关系的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercialization potential of this project is to address the need for a small, low-cost, and high-accuracy angular rate and angular orientation sensor (also known as a gyroscope) for a wide range of applications. Gyroscopes are desired by many emerging applications such as inertial measurement units for small satellites such as CubeSats, autonomous vehicles, drones, and high-end wearable electronics. These applications require a gyroscope with a similar price ( $10) but ~10,000 times better accuracy than those currently used in smartphones. The birdbath resonator gyroscope (BRG) is a novel micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscope with a strong potential to satisfy the needs of these applications due to significantly better resonance quality and mechanical symmetry than current silicon gyroscopes. The economic impact of BRGs will be enormous since many industries can utilize high-performance gyroscopes to monitor the dynamics of their systems, provide positional awareness, and improve the performance of other parts of these systems. Availability of low-cost and high-performance gyroscopes will enable users to further understand their applications and explore their limits and applicability across a broad range of societal needs.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop a new batch-level microfabrication technology to enable the commercialization of low-cost, very high-performance MEMS gyroscope from fused-silica. Gyroscopes available today are either accurate but large and expensive (example: hemispherical resonator gyroscope), or small and cheap but inaccurate (example: smartphone gyroscopes). High-accuracy silicon MEMS gyroscopes in research are small and accurate but expensive. This is because silicon has fundamentally low mechanical resonance quality factor (Q) so it is difficult to manufacture high-accuracy gyroscopes with a high yield. The BRG is a gyroscope made from fused-silica and capable of having low cost, small size, and high performance. Its fused silica micro mechanical resonator can achieve significantly higher Q than silicon, which allows the BRG to be manufactured with a high yield. The BRG fabrication process uses a blowtorch to reflow-mold a fused silica substrate into three-dimensional hollow shells with dimensions of several 10s of micrometers to several millimeters with high geometrical accuracy. The proposed research will significantly enhance our understanding of the relationships among size, design, and process on the performance of the BRG as well as the relationship among detailed process parameters, yield and reproducibility on cost.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.