Physical Sensors & Devices

Research that includes:

  • Silicon MEMS actuators: comb, electro-thermal, and plastic deformation
  • Precision electronic sensing and measurements of capacitive, frequency, and coulombic MEMS variables
  • Structures and architectures for gyroscopes, accelerometers, micro strain gauges for direct application to rigid structures e.g., steel, and levitated MEMS

BPNX1013: 3D Printing of Architected Hydrophones

Victor Couedel
Haotian Lu
2024

Piezoelectric hydrophones are crucial for underwater applications such as communication and seafloor mapping. Limited by the brittleness of piezoelectric ceramics, conventional manufacturing methods restrict hydrophones’ shapes to simple geometries such as disks, cylinders, or spheres, which limits the sensitivity, directivity pattern, and working frequency bandwidth of the device.


We are developping a new class of high-performance 3D printed piezoelectric hydrophones consisting of rationally designed micro-architectures. Using a high-...

BPN978: Hot Car Studies: Preventing Child Vehicular Heatstroke

Anthony Hon
2024

Young children trapped in a car without adult supervision may suffer life-threatening complications such as hyperthermia and heat stroke from extreme temperatures—which may rise to 130 °F in some cases. Our research aims to ascertain child presence within two to three minutes of unsupervised activity by probing increases in the levels of carbon dioxide emitted during human exhalation. Non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors are employed to measure car carbon dioxide concentrations every two seconds. Specific numerical metrics are then derived from the data, and the presence of a child can...

BPNX1014: Data-Driven Design of Metamaterials

Marco Maurizi
David Hahn
Anish Satpati
Desheng Yao
2024

The rapid development of additive manufacturing technologies has enabled the fabrication of truss metamaterials, i.e., a novel class of lightweight-yet-strong materials with engineered complex hierarchical structures. Manipulating the architecture over chemical composition dramatically expands the achievable materials design space, allowing to largely control the mechanical response of metamaterials. Despite the great advances made in this area, designing three-dimensional (3D) truss metamaterials under complex or extreme conditions with programmable response is still a...

BPN972: Temperature-Insensitive Resonant Strain Sensor

Xintian Liu
Kevin H. Zheng
2024

Explore the ultimate capability of a vibrating ring-based electrical stiffness-based resonant strain sensor, rigorously confirming a superior insensitivity to temperature that should permit it to operate under wide temperature excursions, such as experienced in harsh automotive environments.

Project currently funded by: Industry Sponsored

BPN915: Control of Microrobots with Reinforcement Learning

Yichen Liu
Kesava Viswanadha
Zhongyu Li
Emily Tan
Nelson Lojo
Derrick Han Sun
Aviral Mishra
Rushil Desai
2024

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...

BPN735: Walking Silicon Microrobots

Yichen Liu
Alexander Alvara
Daniel Lovell
Dang Le
2024

Our goal is to build a family of autonomous silicon robotic insects with actuating, computing, and power capabilities integrated. A silicon-on-insulator (SOI) device is used to house all three components. These robots use electrostatic actuators driving silicon linkages, all fabricated in the device layer of the wafer. By using electrostatic actuation, these actuator linkage systems have the advantage of being low power compared to other methods of actuation on microscale granting robot autonomy through low-power energy harvesting. Computation and communication are carried out with Single...

YoungJun Kim

Graduate Student Researcher
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Professor Roya Maboudian (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2025 (Anticipated)

visiting scholar in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

PhD candidate in Chemical and Biomolecular Enginnering department, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

BS degree was obtained in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

BPN992: Sensing and Actuation Applications Using Lithium Niobate PMUTs

Wei Yue
Megan Teng
2024

Sensing, actuation and imaging applications based on ultrasounds could expand to many applications by means of miniaturization and low power consumption via MEMS fabrication technologies. Piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducers (PMUTs) with thin film designs have emerged as key commercial products but current state-of-art PMUTs are limited by the acoustic power/pressure for applications within a limited range by using AlN as the piezoelectrical material due to its process compatibility with microelectronics. One BSAC industrial member has developed a process to make PMUT devices...

BPN973: Piezoresistive Cement Paste for Structural Health Monitoring

Stuart McElhany
2024

Concrete is the most widely used engineered material in the world and finds use in nearly every aspect of civil infrastructure. Safety concerns posed by the aging of infrastructure combined with the prevalence of concrete in these systems highlights the demand for a concrete-composite capable of structural health monitoring (SHM) while being low-cost and easily implementable. Embedment of electrically conductive forms of carbon such as graphitic fibers and nanotubes allow for concrete and other cementitious composites to act as self-sensors capable of SHM through a...

BPN961: Integrated Photonics for Scalable Trapped Ion Quantum Computing

Daniel Klawson
Yiyang Zhi
Arkadev Roy
Rohan Kumar
2024

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...