Liwei Lin (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Liwei Lin

Lin Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

MEMS Aluminum Nitride Technology for Inertial Sensors

Gabriele Vigevani
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Ming C. Wu
2011
The design and fabrication of MEMS Inertial Sensors (both accelerometers and gyro-scopes) made of Aluminum Nitride (AlN) is described in this dissertation. The goal of this work is to design and fabricate inertial sensors based on c-axis oriented AlN polycrystalline thin films. AlN is a post-CMOS compatible piezoelectric material widely used for acoustic resonators, such Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) and Lamb Wave Resonators(LWR). In this work we develop the design techniques necessary to obtain inertial sensors...

Micromachined Electrodes for High Performance Capacitive Pressure Sensors

Vikram Shenoy
Roger T. Howe
Liwei Lin
2000

This report discusses the use of silicon micromachining to create a part for subassembly into a high performance capacitive pressure sensor. The micromachined silicon part replaces traditionally machined metal parts. The micromachined parts provide tight control of the gap between the electrode ...

Micro-Columnated Loop Heat Pipe: The Future of Electronic Substrates

Navdeep Singh Dhillon
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Omer Savas ̧
Ali Javey
2012
The modern world is run by semiconductor-based electronic systems. Due to continuous improvements in semiconductor device fabrication, there is a clear trend in the market towards the development of electronic devices and components that not only deliver enhanced computing power, but are also more compact. Thermal management has emerged as the primary challenge in this scenario where heat flux dissipation of electronic chips is increasing exponentially, but conventional cooling solutions such as conduction and...

Material Synthesis and Characterization for Micro-supercapacitor Applications

Benjamin Hsia
Roya Maboudian
David B. Graves
Liwei Lin
2013

Supercapacitors represent a critical energy storage device technology for applications which require higher power density and/or cycle lifetime than existing battery technologies. Microscale supercapacitors, in particular, can enable novel applications in autonomous, wireless microsensors and microelectronics. If these micro-supercapacitors can be fabricated in a planar, on-chip geometry, the energy storage and the device...

Low-Power, High-Stability FM MEMS Gyroscopes

Yu-Ching Yeh
Bernhard E. Boser
Liwei Lin
2016

With the advantages of small size and low cost, MEMS gyroscopes have been used in a variety of applications such as image stabilization, gaming control, and motion tracking for mobile or wearable devices. One potential application for MEMS gyroscopes is indoor navigation. This minimizes the infrastructure requirements compared with other approaches with electromagnetic reference beacons. However, recent consumer MEMS gyroscopes are still orders away from achieving navigation grade performance.

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Localized Strain Sensing Using High Resolution, Highly-sensitive MEMS Resonant Strain Gauges

Matthew Wei-Jen Chan
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
2010

This thesis presents experimental measurements of the first-ever MEMS double ended tuning fork (DETF) resonant strain gauge for localized strain field sensing, successfully bonded to steel by rapid inductive heating. With a gauge length of just 200μm, the presentedMEMS resonant strain gauge enables a high spatial resolution sensor capable of accurately detecting localized strains better than commonly used foil strain gauges, which average strain measurements over much larger areas. The...

Integrated MEMS Cavity Optomechanical Oscillators for Wireless and Optical Communications

Turker Beyazoglu
Clark T.-C. Nguyen
Ming C. Wu
Liwei Lin
2016
Recent advancements in micro-optical and micro-mechanical resonator technologies haveallowed researchers to exploit coupling between the optical field and mechanical motionin an optical cavity to affect cooling or amplification of mechanical motion. Cooling the mechanical motion of microscale objects has been of high scientific interest, since it facilitates observation and exploration of certain quantum phenomena, e.g., the standard quantum limit of detection. On the other hand, amplification of the mechanical motion...

Integrated Biophysical Microfluidic Platforms for Pathogen Detection and Single Cell Analysis

Poorya Sabounchi
Luke P. Lee
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Daniel A. Fletcher
2007
Pathogen detection is of the utmost importance primarily for health and safety reasons. The most common problem encountered with current pathogen monitoring techniques is the inverse relationship between specificity versus sensitivity and speed. Current tools used for pathogen identification are accurate but require a vast amount of sample preparation time, typically from an experienced operator in a laboratory setting and therefore not suitable for...

Integration of Hydrogels and Plastics into Microfabrication Processes towards a MEMS RF-Interrogated Biosensor

Sebastien Payen
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Amy E. Herr
2007
Very inexpensive biosensors capable of monitoring biometrics data of a living organism have long been a goal of biomedical device technology. As such the integration of polymers and plastics are a good solution to achieve low cost and powerless devices. This dissertation presents experimental results on the integration of hydrogels (a class of polymer which swells in water) into microfabrication processes and the development of a new, all-plastic pH sensor. In particular, the work done on oxygen diffusion in hydrogels...

Highly Scalable Silicon Photonic Switches Based on Waveguide Crossbar with Movable Waveguide Couplers

Sangyoon Han
Ming C. Wu
Richard S. Muller
Liwei Lin
2016
Fast opticalcircuitswitches (OCS) having a large number of ports can significantly enhance the performance and the efficiency of modern data centers by actively rearranging network patternsCommercially available optical switches typically operate with the use of moving mirror arrays. These switches can have port counts...