Publications

Polycrystalline Silicon-Germanium Contact Resistance Study for Integrated MEMS Technology

Marie-Ange Eyoum
Tsu-Jae King
Roger T. Howe
2003

Co-fabrication of surface micromachined micro-electromechanical devices and control electronics is advantageous for reducing cost and improving performance of microsystems[l]- [8]. With the MEMS and electronic circuits on separate chips, the parasitic capacitance and resistance...

Piezoelectric Aluminum Nitride RF Front-End Design for Wireless Communication

Yun-Ju Lai
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
2008
A micromachined radio frequency bandpass filter comprised by thin film piezoelectric aluminum nitride (AlN) lamb wave resonators for wireless communication channel selection has been developed, fabricated and tested. The AlN lamb wave resonator has a multilayered structure with aluminum interdigital transducer (IDT) on top and bottom of a c-oriented aluminum nitride thin film (Al/AlN/Al). The top and bottom IDTs can excite the lowest-order...

Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers for Fingerprint Sensing

Yipeng Lu
David A. Horsley
Nesrin Sarigul-Klijn
Tingrui Pan
2015
Fingerprint identification is the most prevalent biometric technology due to its uniqueness, universality and convenience. Over the past two decades, a variety of physical mechanisms have been exploited to capture an electronic image of a human fingerprint. Among these, capacitive fingerprint sensors are the ones most widely used in consumer electronics because they are fabricated using conventional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)...

Rapid Synthesis of One-Dimensional Nanostructures via Induction Heating

Brian David Sosnowchik
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Ming C. Wu
2008
This work presents the development of a platform technology for the rapid synthesis of a wide range of onedimensional nanostructures using induction heating. The technique is fast, enabling the synthesis of nanostructures in as short as one minute, simple, clean, and scalable. The technique is also versatile, enabling the synthesis of nanostructures in bulk or locally on MEMS, and may open up a new class of rapid nanostructure synthesis. The...

Poly-Crystalline Silicon Carbide Passivated Capacitive MEMS Strain Gauge for Harsh Environments

Babak Jamshidi
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2008
This dissertation describes the design and fabrication of a high-resolution capacitive sensor encapsulated in poly-crystalline silicon carbide. This sensor can continuously measure the strain in the substrate under aggressive environments such as extreme ambient temperature, corrosive media and high-g shocks. This strain sensor has a sub-millimeter gauge length capable of precise assessment of strain fields. The device...

Porous and Epitaxial 3C-SiC Thin Films Technology for Micro-electromechanical Systems and Electronics Applications

Wei-Cheng Lien
Roya Maboudian
David B. Graves
Albert P. Pisano
Tsu-Jae King Liu
2008
Silicon is a widely used semiconductor material because of such factors as its high quality, stable oxide, and low cost. However, silicon-based microdevices are not suitable for harsh environments, such as high temperature, intense vibrations, erosive flows, and corrosive media, because the electric properties of silicon degrades above 250 ̊C and mechanical properties degrades above 600 ̊C. Silicon carbide is a suitable material for harsh...

Optoelectronic Manipulation, Assembly, and Patterning of Nanoparticles

Arash Jamshidi
Ming C. Wu
Constance Chang-Hasnain
Liwei Lin
2009
The synthesis of nanostructures has advanced in the last decade to a point where a vast range of insulating, semiconducting, and metallic materials are available in a variety of forms and shapes such as wires, tubes, ribbons, sheets, and spheres. These nanostructures display exceptional physical properties that can be used to realize novel devices such as high-speed electronics, efficient photovoltaics and thermoelectrics, sensitive chemical and biological ...

On-Chip Thin Film Encapsulation Development Utilizing Porous Anodic Alumina Shell

Nicolas Ferrier
Albert P. Pisano
2010

The encapsulation of a MEMS device constitutes one of the last but not least step of its fabrication process from the point of view of the numerous requirements that the package has to fulfill as well as the high costs it encounters. To sort out this issue, the thin film encapsulation technique has shown interesting results for many years now and constitutes a cheap and easy solution. An improvement of this method in...

Optofluidic Devices for Cell, Microparticle, and Nanoparticle Manipulation

Aaron Takami Ohta
Ming C. Wu
Constance Chang-Hasnain
Albert P. Pisano
Kevin Healy
2008
Research in the micro- to nanoscale regimes is facilitated by technologies that enable the addressing of these tiny particles. In biological research, manipulation enables the study of single-cell behavior, as well as the sorting of specific target cells from a mixed population. In engineering applications, micro- and nanoparticles can be assembled to form electronic and optoelectronic devices. Several types of forces can be used to manipulate micro- and...

Novel Processes for Modular Integration of Silicon-Germanium MEMS with CMOS Electronics

Carrie Wing-Zin Low
Tsu-Jae King Liu
Roger T. Howe
Richard M. White
Oscar D. Dubon Jr.
2007
Equipment control, process development and materials characterization for LPCVD poly-SiGe for MEMS applications are investigated in this work. In order to develop a repeatable process in an academic laboratory, equipment monitoring methods are implemented and new process gases are explored. With the dopant gas BCl3, the design-of-experiments technique is used to study the dependencies of deposition rate, resistivity, average residual stress,...