News & Events

BSAC Seminar: Brillouin MEMS

May 8, 2012
Dr. Gaurav Bahl Optics and Photonics Laboratory, University of Michigan Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign May 8, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Ali Javey

In a manner similar to the forces that we feel as a car goes around a curve, light is also known to apply centrifugal force when guided along a circular path. In recent years, whispering gallery microdevices have emerged that exploit optical forces...

BSAC Seminar: Contamination Thresholds of Pt- and RuO2- Coated Microrelays

June 15, 2012
Prof. Maarten de Boer Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University June 15, 2012 | 11:00 to 12:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Roya Maboudian

Microelectromechanical relays are of great interest in radio-frequency communications, power switching applications, and in automatic test equipment. Ohmic DC relays must maintain low electrical resistance over millions to billions of cycles. As such devices are cycled, soft metal coatings such as gold either tend to (i) cold-...

BSAC Seminar: Mass-Mobility Characterization of Flame-Made ZrO2 Aerosols: Primary Particle Diameter & Extent of Aggregation

June 22, 2012
Max Eggersdorfer Institute of Process of Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich June 22, 2012 | 11:00 to 12:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Niels Quack

My research focuses on the simulation of nanoparticle growth by coagulation and sintering and real-time characterization methods of the former in the gas-phase. Although models exist to characterize agglomerates of spherical particles, up to now the primary particle size was obtained ex-situ from electron microscopy,...

BSAC Seminar: Hollow Stems for Higher Micromechanical Disk Resonator Quality Factor

September 4, 2012
Lingqi Wu Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher September 4, 2012 | 12:00 to 12:30 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Clark Nguyen

The use of hollow support stems to reduce energy loss to the substrate while supporting all-polysilicon UHF micromechanical disk resonators has enabled quality factors as high as 93,231 at 178 MHz and 56,061 at 329 MHz -- values now in the same range as previous disk resonators employing multiple materials with more...

BSAC Seminar: Chemical Sensor Using Optical Antenna

August 28, 2012
Tae Joon Seok Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher August 28, 2012 | 12:30 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Ming Wu

Optical antennas are widely used in surface-enhanced Ramon spectroscopy (SERS) because of their ability to focus light in sub-diffraction-limited area, resulting in strong field enhancement. The field enhancement depends critically on the gap spacing of optical antennas. Current nanofabrication techniques such as...

BSAC Seminar: Monolayer Semiconductor Devices

September 4, 2012
Hui Fang Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher September 4, 2012 | 12:30 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Ali Javey

Monolayer chalcogenides have recently been shown promising for future scaled electronics. We report high performance p-type field-effect transistors based on single layered (thickness, ~0.7 nm) WSe2 as the active channel with chemically doped source/drain contacts and high-ê gate dielectrics. The top-gated monolayer transistors...

BSAC Seminar: Microfluidic Reactors for the Synthesis of Monodisperse Nanoparticles

September 25, 2012
Yegân Erdem Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley BSAC Graduate Student Researcher September 25, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Al Pisano

Microfluidic reactors – or microreactors – show promise for commercial-scale synthesis of nanoparticles with well controlled size, size distribution and shape. Compared to batch-wise synthesis techniques, microfluidic technology can provide better control of the reaction conditions, which is the key to controlling the product characteristics. Handling...

BSAC Seminar: Making VO2 Work

October 2, 2012
Prof. Junqiao Wu Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UC Berkeley October 2, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: John Huggins

Vanadium dioxide (VO₂) exhibiting coupled metal-insulator and structural phase transition at 67 degrees C is of great interest for both fundamental understanding of correlated electron physics and potential device applications. In this talk I will focus on the application side of our recent VO₂ work. By probing the phase transition under a surface electrostatic field or a...

BSAC Seminar: Towards Unprecedented Accuracy and Control, Extraordinary Dexterity, and CAD for the Masses

October 16, 2012
Prof. Jason Clark Schools of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University BSAC PhD 2005 October 16, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Kris Pister

Some metrology problems include: no two MEMS behave identically; lack of ASTM measurement standards; calibration can be 40% of manufacturing costs; experiment never matches simulation; and MEMS are precise but inaccurate. Some dextrous problems include: 10 microns or degrees is considered large deflection; packaging limits interaction...

BSAC Seminar: Computationally Inexpensive Simulation of Nanoimprint Lithography: Guiding the Development of Designs and Processes

October 23, 2012
Prof. Hayden Taylor School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore October 23, 2012 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall, DOP Center Conference Room Host: Kameshwar Poolla

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) offers sub-10 nm patterning resolution with lower capital costs than competing technologies. To be adopted widely in data storage and semiconductor manufacturing, however, NIL’s throughput needs to increase and its defect rate needs to fall. One way of improving NIL’s throughput and yield is to develop...