Hemispherical glass shell resonators fabricated using Chemical Foaming Process

Abstract

This paper presents a new and simple fabrication method, Chemical Foaming Process (CFP), to prepare 3-D wineglass resonant shells for gyroscope application. The gas evolved by the thermal decomposition of the foaming agents is used as the driving force to foam the glass into 3-D smooth and symmetric hemispherical structures. The 3-D structures are characterized by Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM) and Scanned Electronic Microscopy (SEM). Results show that 3-D hemispherical shell wineglass structures with smooth surface and symmetric structures are demonstrated successfully.