Publications

Microfluidic Technologies for Single Cell Analysis

Dino Di Carlo
Luke P. Lee
Jay T. Groves
Tejal A. Desai
2006
Analysis of single cells is important for a complete understanding of the heterogeneity that is present in cell behavior and function. Current single cell analysis methods provide high throughput information about labeled compounds within cells, but in most cases cannot follow the dynamic processes occurring in signaling pathways. New microfluidic methods have also been developed to assay fast timescale responses or create uniform environments to study cell behavior in a more quantitative manner....

Line-of-Sight Sealed Silicon Carbide Diaphragms for Harsh Environment Sensors

Debbie Gahaton Jones
Albert P. Pisano
Alice Agogino
Oscar Dubon
2007
Silicon carbide (SiC) is currently being developed as a platform material for micro scale devices that operate in harsh environments. One vision of the future is an all-SiC sensor chip composed of crystalline SiC substrate, doped polycrystalline SiC structures, and sputtered amorphous SiC sealing layers. Such a chip would have minimal internal stresses over a wide thermal range. The chemical inertness, as well as the electrical and mechanical properties of SiC in harsh...

Liquid Fuel Injection System for Mini-Scale Rotary Engines

Sang-Won Park
Albert P. Pisano
A. Carlos Fernandez-Pello
2005

In an attempt to optimize the performance of small scale internal combustion engines, an investigation and development effort for a liquid fuel delivery system is ongoing. Engine operation sets a pair of primary design constraints, fuel mass flow rate and maximum droplet diameter. The fuel mass flow rate requirement is dictated by the stoichiometry, the engine geometry, and the rotational speed. The droplet diameter constraint is ...

Low-Power, High-Stability FM MEMS Gyroscopes

Yu-Ching Yeh
Bernhard E. Boser
Liwei Lin
2016

With the advantages of small size and low cost, MEMS gyroscopes have been used in a variety of applications such as image stabilization, gaming control, and motion tracking for mobile or wearable devices. One potential application for MEMS gyroscopes is indoor navigation. This minimizes the infrastructure requirements compared with other approaches with electromagnetic reference beacons. However, recent consumer MEMS gyroscopes are still orders away from achieving navigation grade performance.

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Localized Strain Sensing Using High Resolution, Highly-sensitive MEMS Resonant Strain Gauges

Matthew Wei-Jen Chan
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
2010

This thesis presents experimental measurements of the first-ever MEMS double ended tuning fork (DETF) resonant strain gauge for localized strain field sensing, successfully bonded to steel by rapid inductive heating. With a gauge length of just 200μm, the presentedMEMS resonant strain gauge enables a high spatial resolution sensor capable of accurately detecting localized strains better than commonly used foil strain gauges, which average strain measurements over much larger areas. The...

Lorentz Force Magnetic Sensors

Mo Li
David A. Horsley
Stephen O’Driscoll
Rajeevan Amirtharajah
2015
This dissertation describes micromechanical Lorentz force magnetic sensors for electronic compass applications. Recent development in commercially available MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes has been focused on the reduction of size, power consumption and cost, which has led to the integration of a 3axis accelerometer and 3axis gyroscope on the same chip, known as the 6axis combo sensor. The growing market of...

Light-induced Electrokinetics: A path to a versatile micro total analysis system

Justin K. Valley
Ming C. Wu
Michel M. Maharbiz
Amy E. Herr
2011

The micro total analysis system (μTAS) has seen great interest and advances since its definition over two decades ago. By harnessing the fabrication tools of the semiconductor industry and exploiting the unique physical phenomena that dominate at the micro- to nano-scale,these devices aim to address applications ranging from point-of-care diagnostics to pharmaceutical development. A truly versatile μTAS technology platform will enable reconfigurable, parallel, and high...

Jewel Bearings for Micro Disk Drives

Kelly Yang
Albert P. Pisano
1996

In current disk drives, ball bearings are typically used for the actuator pivot. The function of the ball bearing is to maintain both small frictional torque and small backlash at the pivot as the actuator suspension arm is being rotated to seek tracks ...

Integrated Nanoscale Antenna-LED for On-Chip Optical Communication

Seth Fortuna
Ming C. Wu
Eli Yablonovitch
Jie Yao
2017
Traditional semiconductor light emitting diodes (LEDs) have low modulation speed because of long spontaneous emission lifetime. Spontaneous emission in semiconductors (andindeed most light emitters) is an inherently slow process owing to the size mismatch betweenthe dipole length of the optical dipole oscillators responsible for light emission and the wave-length of the emitted light. More simply stated: semiconductors behave as a poor antenna for its own light emission. By coupling a semiconductor at the...

Integrated Biophysical Microfluidic Platforms for Pathogen Detection and Single Cell Analysis

Poorya Sabounchi
Luke P. Lee
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Daniel A. Fletcher
2007
Pathogen detection is of the utmost importance primarily for health and safety reasons. The most common problem encountered with current pathogen monitoring techniques is the inverse relationship between specificity versus sensitivity and speed. Current tools used for pathogen identification are accurate but require a vast amount of sample preparation time, typically from an experienced operator in a laboratory setting and therefore not suitable for...