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

BPN849: Large-Amplitude Air-Coupled PMUTs

Yuri Kusano
2019

Ultrasonic transducers are widely used in various applications including medical imaging, nondestructive evaluation, object/gesture recognition, automotive, and range-finding. Compared to conventional capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs), piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs) have an advantage that they can be utilized without high bias voltages, resulting in simpler electronic interfaces. This project targets air-coupled PMUTs with wide bandwidth to achieve high axial resolution in pulse-echo imaging, where air-coupled transducers typically...

BPN868: Self-Cleaning Mass Sensor for Particulate Matter Monitors

Zhiwei Wu
2019

When people inhale small particles, such as soot, they may develop pulmonary, cardiac and neural problems, and millions may die prematurely. Therefore, there is need for widely accessible particulate- matter monitors to enable individuals to avoid areas of high particulate concentration. We propose to test means conceived for cleaning the surfaces of the particle mass-measuring sensors after each particulate deposition, as well as recently...

BPN772: Graphene for Room Temperature Gas Sensors

Takeshi Hayasaka
Zhichun Shao
Vijay Kumar
Ritu Malik
2019

As air pollution from industrial and automobile emissions becomes more and more severe, a personalized, integrated, gas sensor is desirable for everyone to monitor everyday air quality, as well as their personal health condition noninvasively. Such sensors should have desirable features like energy efficiency, miniature size, accurate response (down to ppm level), and selectivity. Traditional bulk MOX-based gas sensors work in the temperature range of 300C to 400C,...

BPN851: Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers with Corrugated Diaphragms Using Surface Micromachining

Guo-Lun Luo
2019

A key metric of micromachined ultrasonic transducer (MUT) performance is the volume velocity, which determines the transmitting output pressure. Here, we present a study to demonstrate corrugated-diaphragm piezoelectric MUTs (PMUTs) which have up to 3.2X higher volume velocity than conventional PMUTs of the same area. The PMUTs are manufactured by a surface-micromachining process forming a high fill-factor (80%) array, and corrugations can be added without any additional masks or process...

BPN770: Chemical Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (CS-FET)

Niharika Gupta
2019

Silicon IC-based fabrication processing will be used to develop novel compact gas sensors that, unlike current sensors, will operate at room temperature, consume minimal power, exhibit superior sensitivity, provide chemical selectivity and multi-gas detection capabilities, and offer the prospect of very low-cost replication for broad-area deployment. We name this device structure “Chemical Sensitive FET” or “CS-FET.” The operation of the CS-FET involves transistor parametric differentiation under...

BPN923: Rapid Isolation and Identification of Drug-Resistant Pathogens with Smartphone-Based Optical System (SOS)

Wonseok Kim
Youngseop Lee
2020

The rapid isolation and identification of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens are critically demanded in global healthcare and precision medicine. However, time-consuming, culture-based methods are currently used for the detection of pathogens since there is no rapid precision molecular diagnostic platform. In this work, we develop a rapid isolation and identification of drug-resistant pathogens with smartphone-based optical system (SOS). For the pathogens detection from human blood sample, we precipitate RBCs with pre-mixed dextran for 10...

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