In this paper, we present methods for characterization of 3-D micro-wineglass resonators. Two interchangeable modes of excitation are demonstrated: (1) Mechanical pinging using a piezo actuated probe assembly and (2) electrostatic excitation using assembled electrode structures. Two interchangeable modes of detection are also presented: optical pick-up using laser Doppler vibrometry and capacitive detection. 3-D micro-glassblown wineglass resonators were used to demonstrate the characterization methods in this paper. Electrostatic excitation was used to obtain the frequency response of micro-glassblown resonators showing a Q-factor of 40.000 at 14.8 kHz, whereas piezo-pinging was used to obtain the time domain response of the resonators. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

© 1992-2012 IEEE. In this paper, we report magnetic neutral loop discharge (NLD) plasma etching of fused silica (FS) and borosilicate glass (BSG), demonstrating high aspect ratio deep etch ( 100~\mu \text{m} ) with vertical walls ( < 3° deviation from vertical). This paper for the first time presents the systematic study of FS and BSG deep etching in NLD plasma. Four different masking materials have been explored including metal, amorphous silicon, bonded silicon, and photoresist. Etch parameters were optimized to eliminate unwanted artifacts, such as micro-masking, trenching, and faceting, while retaining a high aspect ratio (up to 7:1 for FS and 8:1 for BSG). In addition, a method for sidewall roughness mitigation based on postfabrication annealing was developed, showing the sidewall roughness reduction from the average roughness ( R{a} ) 900 to 85 nm. Further advances in deep plasma etching processes may enable the use of FS and BSG in the fabrication of precision inertial MEMS, micro-fluidic, and micro-optical devices. [2015-0078]

In this paper, we present methods for characterization of 3-D micro-wineglass resonators. Two interchangeable modes of excitation are demonstrated: (1) Mechanical pinging using a piezo actuated probe assembly and (2) electrostatic excitation using assembled electrode structures. Two interchangeable modes of detection are also presented: optical pick-up using laser Doppler vibrometry and capacitive detection. 3-D micro-glassblown wineglass resonators were used to demonstrate the characterization methods in this paper. Electrostatic excitation was used to obtain the frequency response of micro-glassblown resonators showing a Q-factor of 40.000 at 14.8 kHz, whereas piezo-pinging was used to obtain the time domain response of the resonators. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We report, for the first time, a MEMS fabrication process for building atomically smooth, symmetric 3-D wineglass and spherical shell structures, using low internal loss materials, namely fused quartz andultra low expansion titania silicate glass (ULE TSG). The approach consists of three major steps: (1) adeep fused quartz cavity etch, (2) plasma activated bonding of fused quartz to fused quartz or TSG and(3) a high temperature (up to 1700̊C) micro-glassblowing process. An in-house process capability of1800̊C glassblowing with a rapid cooling rate of 500̊C/min was developed. Feasibility of the processhas been demonstrated by fabrication of fused quartz and TSG micro-glassblown structures. Spheri-cal and inverted-wineglass shells with self-aligned stem structures were fabricated using this process.The approach may enable new classes of TSG and fused quartz MEMS devices with extremely low sur-face roughness (0.23 nm surface average), intrinsically low thermoelastic dissipation (QTED> 5E+10), andhighly symmetric structures (radial error < 500 ppm). © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

© 2014 IEEE. In this paper, we report Q -factor over 1 million on both n=2 wineglass modes, and high-frequency symmetry (Δ f/f ) of 132 ppm on wafer-level microglassblown 3-D fused silica wineglass resonators at a compact size of 7-mm diameter and center frequency of 105 kHz. In addition, we demonstrate for the first time, out-of-plane capacitive transduction on microelectromechanical systems wineglass resonators. High Q -factor is enabled by a high aspect ratio, self-aligned glassblown stem structure, careful surface treatment of the perimeter area, and low internal loss fused silica material. Electrostatic transduction is enabled by detecting the spatial deformation of the 3-D wineglass structure using a new out-of-plane electrode architecture. Out-of-plane electrode architecture enables the use of sacrificial layers to define the capacitive gaps and 10 μm capacitive gaps have been demonstrated on a 7-mm shell, resulting in over 9 pF of active capacitance within the device. Microglassblowing may enable batch-fabrication of high-performance fused silica wineglass gyroscopes at a significantly lower cost than their precision-machined macroscale counterparts. [2014-0251]