Albert P. Pisano (Advisor)

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...

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 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,...