BIOGRAPHY

Materials for High Quality-Factor Resonating Gyroscopes [BPN655]
This project will investigate new materials suitable for achieving Q-factors in excess of 1 million in resonating gyroscopes. Experimental studies of dissipation caused by thermoelastic and surface losses will be performed using resonator test structures. The effect of doping and microstructure is explored on CVD diamond MEMS resonators. Hundreds of surface micromachined double ended tuning fork (DETF) resonators were fabricated in nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) and microcrystalline diamond (MCD) films deposited using hot filament CVD technique with varying levels of Boron doping. Higher boron doping resulted in reduced Q due to defect losses. Higher surface loss was observed in both MCD and NCD as doping increased. Observed Q-factors were almost the same for MCD and NCD at frequencies near 10 MHz.