Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)

A Silicon-Based Microsensor to Measure Airborne Contaminants

Bharat M. Shah
Richard M. White
Albert P. Pisano
1994

In this reseach project the ability of a microfabricated acoustic-wave microsensor to detect volatile organic compounds in indoor air was studied. The microsensors were made in the Berkeley Microfabrication facility following designs developed at the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center. The devices were exposed in a four-liter chamber to vapor-phase concentrations of six representative VOCs one at a time: tetrachloroethylene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, toluene, benzene, ethanol, and formaldehyde. The device sesnitivity to each VOC was computed from the measured oscillator frequency and...

A Self-Nucleating Evaporator: An Experimental Study of Low-Superheat Pool Boiling via Injection of Gaseous By-Products from the Thermal Decomposition of Azobis-Isobutyronitrile

Christopher William Hogue
Albert P. Pisano
Van P. Carey
2008

For the purpose of exploring a novel heat transfer concept to radically enhance the evaporator performance of the microColumnated Loop Heat Pipe (μLHP) system, an experimental investigation into the feasibility of a lowsuperheat, passive, selfnucleating evaporator surface was performed. The evaporator test surfaces were treated...

BPN442: MEMS Poly/Nano: Multifunctional Nanowire Sensor for Physiological pH and Oxygen Sensing

Sun Choi
2010

The long range goal of this project is to develop a multifunctional silicon nanowire array sensor in microfluidic system for real-time detection of physiological parameters such as pH level and oxygen concentration dissolved in the aqueous environment. The sensing targets include the medium of cultured mammalian cells or microbial species such as bacteria. During certain types of metabolism processes of these biological species, extracellular environment will experience changes of pH levels and oxygen concentration. Our goal is to design nanowire array sensor which can be integrated...

BPN366: SiC TAPS: Pressure Sensor Design and Optimization

Benjamin Cheng
2010

The goal of this work is to deliver a sensor module with MEMS-based silicon carbide TAPS sensors integrated with SiC interface circuits for extreme harsh environment applications.

Project end date: 08/13/10

Gimballed Electrostatic Microactuators with Embedded Interconnects

Lilac Muller
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2005
A microgimbal with an integrated in-plane electrostatic microactuator was designed, fabricated, and tested. The microgimbal structure provided pitch and roll compliance between the microactuator and ground, and thus offered mechanical isolation from external disturbances, such as vibration and temperature variations. ...

Micromechanical Power Conversion

J. Mark Noworolski
Seth Sanders
Roger T. Howe
Albert P. Pisano
1998

A new concept in power conversion, based on electromechanical energy storage, is developed. Mechanical energy storage using Silicon offers a 2 order of magnitude improvement in volumetric energy storage density over conventional approaches using...

Biological Applications of Micromachined Ultrasonic Flexural Plate-Wave Technology

Audra Hsien-I Meng
Richard M. White
Rajendra Bhatnagar
Albert P. Pisano
1999
The micromachined acoustic flexural plate-wave (FPW) device has many applications in biological research and medical diagnostics. In order to safely use the FPW device for these applications, we studied the effects of ultrasound produced with the device on biological...

Design, Fabrication, and Optimization of Micromechanical Flexures

Young-Ho Cho
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
1990

In this dissertation are described two types of micromechanical flexures for guiding mov- able micromechanical structures with applications to high-precision Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), whose typical sizes are in the order of ...

Design and Fabrication of PZT-Actuated Silicon Suspensions for Hard Disk Drives

Tsung-Lin Chen
Roberto Horowitz
Roger T. Howe
Albert P. Pisano
2001
Piezoelectrically actuated suspensions are currently being considered by the magneticrecording industry, as a means of achieving dual-stage actuation in magnetic Hard Disk Drives. In most designs, piezoelectric actuators are ...

Large Displacement Electrostatic Microactuators With Polysilicon Flexure Suspensions

Reid Alyn Brennen
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
Homayoon Kazerooni
1993

Two electrostatically-driven surface-micromachined microactuators designed for large displacement motion are presented along with a literature review of microactuators that includes over 300 references. The first polycrystalline silicon device, the semaphore, achieves large amplitudes by resonant excitation of a plate mass attached to the end of a cantilever beam. The semaphore is driven by either linear or curved electrostatic comb drives. The second device, the tangential drive, uses the direct electrostatic force between two charged bars to attain large static displacements in one of...