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Updated: Mar 16, 2026

Fabrication of Silica Ultra High Quality Factor Microresonators
Published on: July 2, 2012
Monolithic Cylindrical Fused Silica Resonators with High Q Factors
Yao Pan1, Dongya Wang2, Yanyan Wang3
1College of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China. yaomeredithpan@hotmail.com.
Abstract:
The cylindrical resonator gyroscope (CRG) is a typical Coriolis vibratory gyroscope whose performance is determined by the Q factor and frequency mismatch of the cylindrical resonator. Enhancing the Q factor is crucial for improving the rate sensitivity and noise performance of the CRG. In this paper, for the first time, a monolithic cylindrical fused silica resonator with a Q factor approaching 8 × 10⁵ (ring-down time over 1 min) is reported. The resonator is made of fused silica with low internal friction and high isotropy, with a diameter of 25 mm and a center frequency of 3974.35 Hz. The structure of the resonator is first briefly introduced, and then the experimental non-contact characterization method is presented. In addition, the post-fabrication experimental procedure of Q factor improvement, including chemical and thermal treatment, is demonstrated. The Q factor improvement by both treatments is compared and the primary loss mechanism is analyzed. To the best of our knowledge, the work presented in this paper represents the highest reported Q factor for a cylindrical resonator. The proposed monolithic cylindrical fused silica resonator may enable high performance inertial sensing with standard manufacturing process and simple post-fabrication treatment.
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