Publications

Microresonators as Vacuum Gauges

Sharon Oh
Roger T. Howe
Liwei Lin
2001
Resonators are sensitive to physical inputs such as pressure and force. The parameters of interest are measured by the shift in resonance frequency. The ease of measurement and their high sensitivity make resonators an attractive means of measuring many...

High-Senstivity Micromechanical Electrostatic Voltmeter

David Loconto
Richard S. Muller
Roger T. Howe
1992

The design, fabrication and testing of electrostatically drive, high-sensitivity dc voltmeters (ESVs), which have demonstrated sensitivity to 10 mV signals is presented in this report. The ESVs have a micromachined test electrode (third layer of polysilicon) 5 um above the shutter, which provides testing repeatability, increased sensitviy to the input and most importantly the ability to accurately model ESV performance. The theoretical first- and second-harmonic output currents are derived. The results of predicted and experimentally meausred signals are compared and show the validity of...

Pressure Driven Microflow Through a Double-T Metering Section

Luke Hunter
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
2003

Many assay devices require metering a calibrated amount of sample foranalysis. As mobile/handheld assay devices become closer to realization, power usage becomes more critical for all system components. Current designs utilize electrokinetically driven flow and well-defined channel geome...

Parametric Design and Characterization of Linear Microvibromotors

Roger Hipwell
Albert P. Pisano
Richard S. Muller
Oliver M. O'Reilly
1997

Resonant microactuators, such as electrostatic combdrives, have proven useful for many small amplitude actuation applications. However, there are a number of micropositioning applications that require a significantly larger travel range than the 10 pm typically achieved by electrostatic combdrives. In addition,...

Microfluid Integrated Nano-Scale Biological Cell Probes

Jesse Herrick
Albert P. Pisano
Luke P. Lee
Lydia L. Sohn
2004

Standard techniques for biological research have proven extremely informative in the past, and will most likely see a continued use in years to come. However, with the correct implementation of some of todays leading technologies on the micro and nano scale, biological research could potentially see extraordinary advances in the...

The Motion of a Pointer Tip Driven by Two Linked Electrostatic Comb Drives

Ronald Fox
1991

In this report, the motion of two linked electrostatic comb drives and the corresponding displacement of the tip of a centrally mounted pointer is examined. Based on the Bulirsch-Stoer numerical method with modified midpoint...

A Curved Teeth Flexible Comb Drive for Electrostatic Microgrippers

Ken Chow
1992

The recently developed microgripper driven by a flexible, electrostatic comb drive has been shown to seize micron-sized objects. However, the comb drive utilized by this microgripper is highly inefficient in developing gripping force and is designed with elementary, straight...

SIlicon Photonic Devices for Optoelectronic Integrated Circuits

Jason Tien
Ming C. Wu
Constance Chang-Hasnain
Xiang Zhang
2009

Electronic and photonic integrated circuits use optics to overcome bottlenecks of microelectronics in bandwidth and power consumption. Silicon photonic devices such as optical modulators, filters, switches, and photodetectors have being developed for integration with electronics based on existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) circuits. An important building block of photonic devices is the optical microresonator.

On-chip whispering-gallery-mode optical resonators such as microdisks, microtoroids, and microrings have very small footprint, and thus...

Strong Optical Injection Locking of Edge-Emitting Lasers and Its Applications

Hyuk-Kee Sung
Ming C. Wu
Constance Chang-Hasnain
Costas P. Grigoropoulos
2006

Semiconductor lasers are essential components that enable high-speed long-haul communication and have been widely used for various applications in photonics technology. Semiconductor lasers under optical injection locking exhibit superior performance over free-running lasers and provide useful applications not achievable through the free-running lasers. The performance of injection-locked lasers has been found to be significantly improved with stronger injection.

In this dissertation, the characteristics and applications of semiconductor lasers under strong...

Engineering Optical Antenna for Efficient Local Field Enhancement

Tae Joon Seok
Ming C. Wu
Eli Yablonovich
Luke P. Lee
2012

Optical antennas have been widely used for variety of applications such as sensitive photodetection, efficient light emission, high-resolution imaging, heat-assisted magnetic recording, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) because they can capture and focus propagating electromagnetic energy into subdiffraction-limited areas and vice versa. However, widespread application of optical antennas has been limited due to lack of appropriate methods for uniform and large area fabrication of antennas, as well as difficulty in achieving an efficient design with small mode volume (gap...