Thursday, February 19, 2026 | 2:30 PM
Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering - Politecnico di Milano
Beta Room (Building 24)
Speaker: Khalil Najafi (Schlumberger)
Contacts: Prof. Giacomo Langfelder | giacomo.langfelder@polimi.it
Abstract
Micro Electro Mechanical Systems technologies have enabled the miniaturization of inertial navigation systems combining acceleration and angular rate sensors (gyroscopes). These MEMS inertial sensors, especially gyroscopes, have made impressive progress in recent years, approaching the performance of the much-larger hemi-spherical resonant gyro (HRG) developed over a few decades ago. The HRG consists of a three-dimensional axisymmetric fused-silica 2-3cm-diameter resonator with a quality factor of >20 million and excellent noise and stability. It has been used in many defense and space systems. Micromachined structures similar to the HRG with diameter <1cm, and quality factor of 10 million have been fabricated using blow-torch molding of fused silica.This talk will review the latest research on fabricating high-performance shell resonators. Experimental results from a fused-silica precision shell birdbath resonating gyroscope with a 1cm resonator has provided a vacuum packaged Q of >5 million, a measured ARW of 0.00016 deg/√hr, and in-run bias stability of 0.0014 deg/hr. This performance, in a device this small, is achieved by optimizing the fabrication of the shell resonator so it provides high Q, large mass, high resonance frequency, and low as-fabricated frequency mismatch. This talk will review research at the University of Michigan on high-Q fused silica resonators and their use in high-performance gyroscopes.
Short Bio
Khalil Najafi is the Schlumberger Professor of Engineering. He served as the Peter and Evelyn Fuss Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2008-2018), Director of the Solid-State Electronics Laboratory (1998-2005), deputy director of the NSF ERC on Wireless Integrated Microsystems (WIMS) (2000-2009), and director of NSF National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN, 2004-2015). He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in 1980, 1981, and 1986 from the University of Michigan. He researches solid-state sensors/actuators, MEMS.
His research interests include: micromachining technologies, micromachined sensors, actuators, and MEMS; analog integrated circuits; implantable biomedical microsystems; hermetic and vacuum packaging; and low-power wireless sensing/actuating systems; inertial sensing systems. He received the IEEE Daniel E. Noble Technical Field Award in 2015 and the IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award in 2013 for “For leadership in microsystem technologies and seminal contributions to inertial sensors and hermetic wafer-level packaging.” He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the American Institute of Biomedical Engineers (AIBME).