Driveless gyroscope response of a quartz piezoelectric vibratory tuning fork

In this paper, we report on the observation of a gyroscope response in the absence of drive oscillator circuitry in a single ended quartz piezoelectric tuning fork. The tuning fork gyroscope was fabricated by conventional photolithography and wet etching techniques. The tuning fork length is 4 mm and the stem length is 2 mm; the tuning fork width and thickness are 0.4 mm and 0.35 mm, respectively. The measured gyroscope sensitivity and signal to noise ratio were 0.22 mV/°/s and 40, respectively, at a rotational rate of 60 °/s.