Physical Sensors & Devices

It has been well established that the bone age of a child can be estimated by using X-ray, CT, MRI, and other large medical imaging devices. While other less expensive and non-radioactive methodology use ultrasonography, these devices are bulky and often require trained technicians to use properly. This project introduces a low-cost, miniaturized device for bone age assessments by microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technologies in the form of a piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducer (pMUT). By integrating Aluminum nitride (AlN) into our 5 mm pMUT, we are capable of...

The rapid development of additive manufacturing technologies has enabled the fabrication of truss metamaterials, i.e., a novel class of lightweight-yet-strong materials with engineered complex hierarchical structures. Manipulating the architecture over chemical composition dramatically expands the achievable materials design space, allowing to largely control the mechanical response of metamaterials. Despite the great advances made in this area, designing three-dimensional (3D) truss metamaterials under complex or extreme conditions with programmable response is still a...

The HelioSwarm mission aims to characterize plasma turbulence, a fundamental process affecting space weather and cosmic phenomena, including interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) and corotating interaction regions (CIRs) from the sun. These characterizations will be driven by nine spacecraft—one central hub and eight smaller nodes—for multi-scale, multi-point measurements of solar wind and interplanetary magnetic fields. The Electron Electrostatic Spectrograph will be located on the hub and it is the only direct electron measurement tool in the swarm. This project requires the...

Ultrasonics has been realized as a nondestructive measurement method for a variety of
applications, such as medical imaging, healthcare monitoring, structural testing, range finding, and motion sensing. Furthermore, high intensity ultrasound can be used in therapeutic treatments, such as lithotripsy for kidney stone comminution, hyperthermia for cancer therapy, high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for laparoscopic surgery and transcranial sonothrombolysis for brain stroke treatment. MEMS ultrasonic transducers are known to have several pronounced advantages over the conventional...