The Application of Chemical Foaming Method in the Fabrication of Micro Glass Hemisphere Resonator

• Main Authors: Jianbing Xie, Lei Chen, Hui Xie, Jinqiu Zhou, Guangcheng Liu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-01-01
• Series: Micromachines
• Subjects: hemisphere resonator gyroscope; hemisphere resonator; chemical foaming process; glassblowing; hemisphere shell; hollow glass microsphere; micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS)
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-666X/9/2/42

Many researchers have studied the miniaturization of the hemisphere resonator gyroscope for decades. The hemisphere resonator (HSR), as the core component, has a size that has been reduced to the submillimeter level. We developed a method of batch production of micro-hemisphere shell resonators based on a glass-blowing process to obtain larger hemisphere shells with a higher ratio of height to diameter (H/D), we introduced the chemical foaming process (CFP) and acquired an optimized hemisphere shell; the contrasted and improved H/D of the hemisphere shell are 0.61 and 0.80, respectively. Finally, we increased the volume of glass shell resonator by 51.48 times while decreasing the four-node wineglass resonant frequencies from 7.24 MHz to 0.98 MHz. The larger HSR with greater surface area is helpful for setting larger surrounding drive and sense capacitive electrodes, thereby enhancing the sensitivity of HSR to the rotation. This CFP method not only provides more convenience to control the shape of a hemisphere shell but also reduces non-negligible cost in the fabrication process. In addition, this method may inspire some other research fields, e.g., microfluidics, chemical analysis, and wafer level package (WLP).