A ring gyroscope with on-chip capacitive stress compensation

Abstract

We present long-term stress compensation results for a 3.2mm diameter ring gyroscope integrated with 16 capacitive stress sensors for the first time in this work. A bridge-type capacitive sensor is preferred due to its compact size and temperature insensitivity for on-chip stress measurements. The ring design enables a high level of integration and stress sensor-gyroscope output correlation. We first demonstrate the stress sensor operation on a stress test-bed. The drift test for sixteen days at mismatched mode and the drift test for eight days at matched mode in room temperature reveal that the stress compensation can eliminate the gyroscope drift. The stability of the stress compensated gyroscope output can reach 0.008°/h in mismatched mode and 0.003°/h in matched mode at an averaging time of two days with no signs of long-term drift. High gyroscope stability is achieved with a partial least-squares fitting algorithm; however, we believe that stress and gyroscope output relation might be linear time-variant with possible nonlinear and hysteresis effects. Analysis of the drive and sense mode frequencies shows that only temperature cannot explain the frequency variations, and the inclusion of stress can comprehensively describe the frequency changes.