Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)

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...

Design, Fabrication, Position Sensing, and Control of Electrostatic, Surface-Micromachined Polysilicon Microactuators

Patrick Ching-Pak Cheung
Roberto Horowitz
Roger T. Howe
Albert P. Pisano
1995
This dissertation describes the design, fabrication, position sensing, and control of an electrostatically-driven microactuator. The polysilicon microactuator, together with an on-chip electronic buffer, were fabricated by the Modular ...

Fluidic Microsystems Fabricated in Epoxy

Nelson Kuan
Albert P. Pisano
Dorian Liepmann
Susan J. Muller
2001
SU-8 epoxy was applied in fabricating microfluidic systems through a low-cost and robust process. The complete fabrication and packaging process is introduced in this work and further highlighted by the presentation of two application examples: a static fluidic structure design ...

Control of Fluids in Microscale Devices

Michael James DeBar
Dorian Liepmann
Albert P. Pisano
Richard M. White
2001
Pumping in microdevices due to gradients in surface tension was investigated both theoretically and experimentally. When a gradient in surface tension exists along an interface between two fluids, there is a net motion of the interface. The...

Selective Encapsulations of MEMS: Micro Channels, Needles, Resonators and Electromechanical Filters

Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
Van P. Carey
1993
Surface and combined surface/bulk micromachining techniques are developed for selectively encapsulated micro devices including micro flow channels, micro hypodermic needles, hermetically sealed lateral micro resonators and electromechanical filters. As part of...

Microscale and Nanoscale Neural Interfaces

Karen Chihrnin Cheung
Luke P. Lee
Rajendra Bhatnagar
Yang Dan
Albert P. Pisano
2002
In order to mitigate the effccts of neurological disability, new neural interfaces are actively being developed. We present several new neural interfaces which can be used in both implantable and on-chip devices. ...

Liquid to Vapor Phase Change in Constant Cross-Section Silicon Microchannels

Brenda Haendler
Albert P. Pisano
Dorian Liepmann
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2003
This paper presents research on the evaporation of methanol/water mixtures in uniformly heated, constant cross-section, serpentine silicon microchannels for potential application as a fuel injection system for a MEMS rotary engine. The phase change of a variety of mixtures of methanol and water was observed, characterized and compared to the phase change both of pure water and pure methanol. Seven different fluids were tested: pure water, pure methanol and five different molar fractions of methanol mixed with water....

Solid Propellant Microrockets

Dana Teasdale
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Albert P. Pisano
2000

This paper details the design, fabrication and testing of millimeter scale solid propellant rockets for use as one-time deployment platforms carrying communication-equipped MEMS sensor systems, known as Smart Dust. Each rocket assembly is an integrated system, incorporating a combustion chamber, composite propellant grain, nozzle, igniter, and thermoelectric power converter. Solid propellant is advantageous for a millimeter-scale single-use device because of its simple implementation, unlike liquid propellants, which...

Water-Powered Microfluidic Devices for Diagnostic and Drug Delivery Systems

Yu-Chuan Su
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Luke P. Lee
2003
This dissertation presents the development of water-powered microfluidic devices, including actuators, pumps, pressure-sensitive valves, and flow discretizers, by integrating osmosis, capillarity, microfabrication, and polymer processing technologies at the microscale. By harvesting and coordinating the mechanical actuations driven by chemical potentials and interfacial forces, these water-powered devices can transport flows in pre-...

Electromagnetic Effects in MEMS Application: Actuators, Relay and Packaging

Andrew Cao
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Luke P. Lee
2004
Two electromagnetic effects are utilized in MEMS applications: electromagnetic Lorentz force for bi-directional actuator/relay operations, and electromagnetic induction heating for MEMS bonding and packaging processes. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, a liquid-metal wetted contact process is developed to reduce the contact resistance in MEMS relay applications. Electromagnetic Lorenz force...