Decoupled Comb Capacitors for Microelectromechanical Tuning-Fork Gyroscopes

Abstract

This letter presents a novel comb capacitor which can decouple the mechanical crosstalk between the sensing and driving modes of gyroscopes. The capacitance and electrostatic force of the comb capacitor are simulated and analyzed to verify the decoupling principle. A lateral-axis tuning-fork gyroscope is used successfully to demonstrate the decoupling capability of the comb capacitor, resulting in a nonlinearity of 0.6% with full scale of 1000 °/s and a bias stability of 0.05 °/s (1¿) for 30 min.