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This paper reports on the design and simulation of a novel MEMS based convective gyroscope which can independently detect three components of angular rate. The sensor was designed with standard bulk MEMS technology. The 3D jet flow was simulated in the confined space formed by MEMS compatible laminated-structures. The configuration of the sensor consists of a PZT diaphragm, caps, in-plane tungsten hotwires located on the surface of a 0.4mm-thick circular silicon frame with diameter of 10mm. The simulated scale factors of the sensor are SFz = 0.83 μV/o/s, SFx = SFy = 3.10 μV/o/s. In measurement application, the 3DOF gyro eliminates the sensor-to-sensor misalignment, and therefore provides accurate measurement with small cross-sensitivity. The sensor also has high shock resistance since no proof mass is used.

In this paper, we present the optimization of the PZT diaphragm pump for application in gas gyroscope. A circular flow inside the sealed case is simulated in detail by utilizing 3D compressible flow with the interaction of fluid-solid phase and the transient analysis is employed. The working principle and the effect of the jet-pump integrated inside the sensor are explained and validated by experiments using anemometry technique. The results verified that configuration of the pump is optimized and the peak velocity of the flow at the sensing element is 3.5m/sec after starting the pump 3.6ms. A novel structure of the sensing element of the gas gyroscope, consists of thermistor and heater, is also reported. The thermistor is heated by a separate heater, whose power is supplied independently form that of thermistor. This design allows low voltage on the thermistor, therefore the noise is reduced. Both heater and thermistor are optimized in order to reduce the thermal induced stress which occurred in the old thermistors at working temperatures. The thermal stress appeared in p-type silicon thermistors reduced the performance of sensor by 7.5%, which is calculated and experimentally confirmed.

This paper presents the development of a dual axis convective microaccelerometer, whose working principle is based on the convective heat transfer and thermo-resistive effect of lightly-doped silicon. Different with developed convective accelerometer, the sensor utilizes a novel structure of the sensing element which can reduce 93% of thermal-induced stress. Moreover, the thermistors are made from low-doped p-type silicon, which has the TCR higher than that of metals and poly-silicon convective accelerometer. By using numerical method, the chip dimensions and the package size are optimized. The sensitivity of the sensor was simulated; other characteristics such as frequency response, shock resistance, noise problem are also deeply investigated. The sensor has been fabricated by MEMS process and characterized by experiments.