Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)

Thermal Ground Plane for Chip-Level Electronics Cooling

Hongyun So
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Tsu-Jae King Liu
2014

The three-dimensional thermal ground plane was developed in response to the needs of high-power density electronics applications in which heat must be removed as close to the chip surface as possible. The novel design for this planar cooling device was proposed with three key innovations in the evaporator, wick, and reservoir layer, which provided enhanced and reliable cooling performance without wick dryout and back flows. For the evaporator and reservoir layer, a combination of a tapered channel and a triple-spike microstructure was designed to break up the pinned meniscus at the...

Templated Dry Printing of Conductive Metal Nanoparticles

David Rolfe
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Amy Herr
2015

Printed electronics can lower the cost and increase the ubiquity of electrical components such as batteries, sensors, and telemetry systems. Unfortunately, the advance of printed electronics has been held back by the limited minimum resolution, aspect ratio, and feature fidelity of present printing techniques such as gravure, screen printing and inkjet printing. Templated dry printing offers a solution to these problems by patterning nanoparticle inks into templates before drying.

This dissertation shows advancements in two varieties of templated dry nanoprinting...

Droplet-Based Microfluidic Systems: Finger-Powered Pumps, Reactors and Magnetic Capsules

Kosuke Iwai
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Luke P. Lee
2014

The combination of microfabrication and microfluidics has enabled a variety of opportunities in making new tools for biological and diagnostic applications. For example, microdroplets-based systems have attracted lots of attentions in recent years due to potential advantages in controlled environments with fast reaction time, high-throughput and low noises. This work presents a number of advanced microfluidic systems in process, control and manipulation of microdroplets, including finger-powered pumps to generate microdroplets, continuous-flow rupture reactors for the rupture and...

High Energy Density Metal Oxide and Conducting Polymer Supercapacitors

Roseanne Warren
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Ali Javey
2015

Supercapacitors are electrochemical energy storage devices characterized by rapid charge- discharge speeds, high power densities, and long cycle lifetimes compared to batteries.1,2 Supercapacitors have many promising applications as energy storage devices in electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, grid energy management, as well as stationary and portable electronics.2 A current limitation of supercapacitors is their low energy density compared to batteries, which hinders their application as stand-alone energy storage systems...

Integrated 4H-Silicon Carbide Diodes and Bridge Circuits for Harsh Environment Applications

Shiqian Shao
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Tsu-Jae King Liu
Jie Yao
2016

High temperature electronics, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and sensors that are able to operate between 300°C to 600°C have broad applications in harsh environments such as oil/gas exploration, geothermal development, industrial manufacturing processes, and space exploration. 4H-silicon carbide (SiC) is a good material for harsh environment applications because of its wide bandgap, high carrier mobilities, excellent thermal and chemical stabilities, and high breakdown electric field strength. Several 4H-SiC devices and integrated circuits have been studied in this work,...

Yuyi Lin

Alumni
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)
Ph.D. 1989

Ching-Yao Chan

Alumni
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)
Ph.D. 1988

Young-Ho Cho

Alumni
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)
Ph.D. 1990

Chang-Jin Kim

Alumni
Mechanical Engineering
Professor Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)
Ph.D. 1991

Silicon Electromechanical Microgrippers: Design, Fabrication, and Testing

Chang-Jin Kim
Albert P. Pisano
Richard S. Muller
1991
Microgrippers with jaw spans of l0um have been made from thin films (2um thick) of polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon) by using micromachining technology derived from IC-manufacturing methods. A 500um-long, on-wafer gripper, electrostatically driven by flexible-comb actuators, has been designed, fabricated,...