Physical Sensors & Devices

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) play a pivotal role in scaling trapped ion quantum systems. However, current quantum PICs suffer from low ion densities. We present a novel quantum PIC for individual optical control of closely-spaced trapped ion qubits. Our device achieves effectively achromatic beam focusing from 405 nm to 810 nm (and beyond) via a planar waveguide lens and a 3D-printed biconic mirror. Moreover, we have measured 30 dB crosstalk at a 5 µm pitch for the 532 nm and 729 nm barium and calcium gate wavelengths, surpassing the state-of-the-art. Finally, our monolithic surface...

Developing task schedulers and low-level end-to-end controllers for microrobots operating in complex environments often demands extensive system and environment knowledge, leading to prolonged design cycles for specialized controllers. To expedite the generation of general controllers without requiring domain-specific expertise, we propose utilizing model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) trained within simulated environments. Our research advances microrobot control through two key approaches: modeling the long-term dynamics of robots and distilling computationally intensive model...

Sweat rate can provide the precautious signal of hyperhidrosis, hypohidrosis, and autonomic dysfunction. Currently, microfluidic and hygrometer-based sweat rate sensors are two types of available real-time sweat rate sensors. However, microfluidic device has issues of low temporal resolution, limited volume capacity, and surrounding artifact dependencies, while hygrometer-based devices also has overfilling and environmental artifact issues. In this work, we present reusable sweat rate sensor for continuous monitoring of sweat rate with novel sensor design.

Project...

The performance of ultrasonic transducers is largely determined by the piezoelectric properties and geometries of their active elements. Due to the brittle nature of piezoceramics, existing processing tools for piezoelectric elements only achieve simple geometries, including flat disks, cylinders, cubes and rings. While advances in additive manufacturing give rise to free-form fabrication of piezoceramics, the resultant transducers suffer from high porosity, weak piezoelectric responses, and limited geometrical flexibility. We introduce optimized piezoceramic printing and...