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

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-...

BPN852: Frequency to Digital Converter for FM Gyroscopes

Burak Eminoglu
2020

Frequency modulated (FM) gyroscopes are a new class of inertial sensors which measure the angular rotation rate. They offer several advantages including accurate scale factor, large dynamic range, and robust performance over temperature variation. The frequency of the output signal should be detected precisely to extract the slight frequency variations in the modulated signal. This research focuses on the design of high-resolution frequency to digital converters (FDC) for use as the interface circuit for FM gyroscopes. In particular, it is intended to optimize noise performance, dynamic...

BPN934: Display Compatible pMUTs

Sedat Pala
2020

Ultrasonic transducers have been used in many applications from medical imaging to range finding. In recent years, applications have been further expanded to hand-held devices such as fingerprint sensors, and gesture recognitions thanks to advancements in micromachined ultrasonic transducers (MUTs). Compared to conventional ultrasound devices, MEMS ultrasonic transducers have advantages of higher resolution, higher bandwidth, and lower power consumption. More recently, products to interact electronic devices from a distance have been introduced. These products either require an allocated...

BPN918: Magnetically Powered, Untethered Soft Robots with Bioinspired Bone-and-Flesh Constructs

Renxiao Xu
Fanping Sui
2020

We present a new class of soft robots inspired by the bone-and-flesh construct in human body for fast, deterministic actuation. Two distinctive advancements have been achieved: (1) untethered robots with external magnetic power, boasting high normalized power density of ~2*10-2/s (40-6,000,000x higher than most reports); (2) ultrafast and deterministic-shape actuation in ~0.1 seconds (100x faster than the state-of-the-art). Inspired by the natural human architecture, our soft robots with different elastomer (flesh) structures and magnet (bone) placements can complete various tasks...