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

BPN921: Passivating Contacts for Silicon Solar Cells by Lewis Acids and Bases

Wenbo Ji
2020

A salient characteristic of solar cells is their ability to subject photo-generated electrons and holes to pathways of asymmetrical conductivity - assisting them toward their respective contacts. All commercially available crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells achieve this by making use of doping in either near-surface regions or overlying silicon-based films. Despite being commonplace, this approach is hindered by several optoelectronic losses and technological limitations specific to doped silicon. Our previous work on low/high work function dopant-free...

BPN896: Drug Monitoring with Wearable Sweat Sensors

Li-Chia Tai
2020

Drug monitoring plays crucial roles in doping control and precision medicine. It helps physicians tailor drug dosage for optimal benefits, track patients’ compliance to prescriptions and understand the complex pharmacokinetics of drugs. Conventional drug tests rely on invasive blood draws. While urine and sweat are attractive alternative biofluids, the state-of-the-art methods require separate sample collection and processing steps and fail to provide real-time information. Here we present a wearable platform for drug monitoring. Both stationary iontophoretic induction...

BPN801: Electromagnetic Energy Harvester for Atmospheric and Power-System Sensors on Overhead Power Distribution Lines

Zhiwei Wu
2020

This project is developing inexpensive, easily-installed energy harvesters for mounting on overhead and underground power distribution lines to supply power to sensors that will evaluate and report on the functioning of the power system, and to power co-located environmental sensors, such as particulate matter monitors and toxic gas sensors, that can transmit measurements to nearby personal cell phones and long term storage.

Project end date: 08/12/20

BPN938: Airborne Particulate Matter Monitor with Species Imaging

Richard M. White
2020

The Particulate Matter Monitor that we've been researching determines the concentration of particles in units of mass of particles collected (in micrograms) divided by the volume of air collected (in cubic meters). The goal of this project is to obtain information also about the composition of those particles.

Project end date: 08/12/20

BPN950: Self-Righting for Micro Robots

Alexander Alvara
Hani Gomez
2020

In developing micro-robots for exploration in non-uniform terrain, it is often the case that robots fall over. This work seeks to provide a solution in the self-righting of autonomous micro- robots to overturn a 1cc, 1 gram cube microrobot with regular octahedral symmetry that has fallen on either of its four sides and overturning said microrobot once upside down. Here, a slider 3- bar linkage is used in conjunction with MEMS inchworm motors, capable of producing approx 15uN force output, to sweep the lifting arm and push the cube microrobot to be...

BPN944: Wearable Sweat Sensors for Nutrients Monitoring

Hnin Yin Yin Nyein
Jiangqi Zhao
2020

Nutrients are essential parts of our lives for normal growth and development of body functions. An average person’s intake of nutrients per day is not enough to sustain body needs and thrive the development. To achieve optimal nutrient balance for development, especially in children, it is important to keep track of nutrients level in our body. Sweat, which contains many chemicals including vitamins and amino acids, is an attractive biofluid for routine non- invasive assessment of nutrients level. In this work, we developed a wearable sensor that can accurately provide...

BPN366: SiC TAPS: Pressure Sensor Design and Optimization

Benjamin Cheng
2010

The goal of this work is to deliver a sensor module with MEMS-based silicon carbide TAPS sensors integrated with SiC interface circuits for extreme harsh environment applications.

Project end date: 08/13/10

BPN421: Pipelined ADC Utilizing Passive Inter-stage Gain

Yida Duan
2010

To meet demands for mobile electronic, power has become limiting factor for most ADC design. In pipelined ADC structure, Inter-stage Gain circuits are the most power hungry building block. Conventionally, Inter-stage gain circuits are implemented using feedback an OTA with a less-than-1 feedback factor (i.e. 1/2 to 1/3). This approach is costly because these OTAs drive not only the load capacitors, but also the sampling and feedback capacitors. As a result, the power consumption of these amplifiers is a feedback factor (i.e., 2 to 3X) worse than their counterparts in unity gain...

Mallika Bariya

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Ali Javey (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2021

Mallika joined Prof. Ali Javey’s group as a PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in 2016. Her research is focused on electrochemical sensing technologies for healthcare applications, with particular emphasis on developing and using sweat sensors to understand how non-invasive parameters can reflect deeper physiology.

BPN910: Frequency Modulated MEMS Gyroscopes with Extremely Small Errors

Burak Eminoglu
2020

High-performance gyroscopes are key elements of inertial navigation systems. Miniaturization of these sensors is desirable to achieve low manufacturing cost, low weight, small size, and low energy consumption. Although miniaturized gyroscopes have been used in a wide range of applications such as gaming and image stabilization, their low performance prevents their implementation in inertial navigation systems. The main goal of this research is to identify, analyze, and characterize parameters that limit the performance of frequency-modulated (FM) gyroscopes and develop extremely high-...