Enhancing MEMS Gyroscope Performance with Vertical Sense Mass Design

Abstract

This study introduces a novel Vertical Sense Mass (VSM) design for MEMS gyroscope sensors, addressing the growing demand for miniaturization and enhanced performance in navigation and industrial applications. Leveraging Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) technology, the VSM design significantly reduces size while offering superior performance compared to traditional planar configurations. Comprehensive theoretical analysis and comparative evaluations demonstrate the VSM design’s advantages across critical metrics, including sensitivity, bandwidth, noise, and device footprint. This advancement represents a substantial leap in MEMS gyroscope technology, enabling high-performance sensing in compact form factors. Specifically, the VSM design achieves a 30 % reduction in sense mass area, resulting in a 36 % smaller sensor footprint. This size reduction is coupled with a significant improvement in the overall Performance Metric (PM), with the VSM design exhibiting a PM of 1090 mHz/dps2μm2 compared to 70.7 mHz/dps2μm2 for the planar design. These analytical findings are supported by existing literature, further validating the superior performance of the proposed VSM design. The detailed fabrication process flow of the structure is presented, and successful fabrication of thick-proof-mass structures using DRIE confirms the feasibility of this innovative approach. These results highlight the potential of the VSM design for future applications requiring compact, high-performance gyroscope sensors.