Publications

Neural Dust: Ultrasonic Biological Interface

Dongjin Seo
Michel M. Maharbiz
Elad Alon
John Ngai
2016

A seamless, high density, chronic interface to the nervous system is essential to enable clinically relevant applications such as electroceuticals or brain-machine interfaces (BMI). Currently, a major hurdle in neurotechnology is the lack of an implantable neural interface system that remains viable for a patient’s lifetime due to the development of biological response near the implant. Recently, mm-scale implantable electromagnetics (EM) based wireless neural interfaces have been demonstrated in an effort to extend system longevity, but the implant size scaling (and therefore...

Growth and Characterization of Silicon Carbide Thin Films and Nanowires

Lunet Luna
Roya Maboudian
Carlo Carraro
Jeffrey Reimer
Liwei Lin
2016

Silicon carbide (SiC) based electronics and sensors hold promise for pushing past the limits of current technology to achieve small, durable devices that can function in high-temperature, high- voltage, corrosive, and biological environments. SiC is an ideal material for such conditions due to its high mechanical strength, excellent chemical stability, and its biocompatibility. Consequently, SiC thin films and nanowires have attracted interest in applications such as micro- and nano-electromechanical systems, biological sensors, field emission cathodes, and energy storage devices....

Deconstruct, Imagine, Build: Bringing Advanced Manufacturing to the Maker Community

Joanne Lo
Eric Paulos
Bjorn Hartmann
Paul Wright
2016

Physical prototypes serve as a common starting point for the process of innovation, improvement of an existing product, and experimentation of new interactions. As the shapes, forms, and functions of the electronic landscape rapidly evolve, fabrication and prototyping methods need to keep up with the changing needs as well. This dissertation contributes concepts and techniques that answer two research questions:

1. What type of prototyping processes and tools could support the rapidly evolving field of interactive technology?

2. How can these...

Environmental Gas Sensing With High Surface Area Nanomaterials on a Low-power Microfabricated Heater Platform

Anna Harley-Trochimczyk
Roya Maboudian
David B. Graves
Liwei Lin
2016

Gas sensors can provide information about the presence of dangerous gases in industrial and residential sites, allowing for improved environmental protection and human health and safety. In order to enable ubiquitous wireless monitoring of combustible and toxic gases, sensor elements with low power consumption are required. Two common types of gas sensors, namely calorimetric and conductometric sensors, rely on heated sensor elements to activate the appropriate reactions with the gas of interest, resulting in high power requirements to maintain the necessary operating temperatures....

Microfluidic Analysis of Vertebrate Red Blood Cell Characteristics

Kathryn Fink
Dorian Liepmann
Luke P. Lee
2016

Continuous multidisciplinary advancements in medicine, science and engineering have led to the rise of biomedical microfluidic devices for clinical diagnoses, laboratory research for modeling and screening of drugs or disease states, and implantable organs such as artificial kidneys. Blood is often the biological fluid of choice for these purposes. However, unique hemodynamic properties observed only in microscale channels complicate experimental repeatability and reliability.

For vessels with 10-300μm diameters, red blood cell properties such as deformability...

Metal Oxides for Solid State Electronics: Transparent Electrodes, Photoanodes and Transistors

Hyun Sung Park
Liwei Lin
2017

Metal oxides have unique characteristics for a variety of modern applications such as thin films and nano-structured materials in optoelectronic devices and renewable energy productions. In this dissertation, three different metal oxides are developed: solution processed antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) thin films for transparent electrodes; high aspect-ratio ZnO nanowires with ALD (Atomic Layer Deposition) TiO2 for stabilizations as photo-anodes; and spin-coated SnO2 films for TFTs (Thin Film Transistors) in the applications of...

Room Temperature Gas Sensing using Graphene FET

Yumeng Liu
Liwei Lin
2017

In the modern age of gas sensing technologies for broad applications such as internet of things, the capability to make selective, small form factor, and highly responsive sensors for applications such as wearable devices and cell phones could revolutionize the fields of gas sensing systems and fabrications. This thesis aims at developing a millimeter-sized and microwatt-powered sensor prototype using graphene field effect transistors (FETs) by exploring various DC and AC modulation techniques to realize the critical gas sensing features of selectivity and fast recovery speed at room...

Integrated Molecular Diagnostic Platform

Byungrae Cho
Luke P. Lee
Ming C. Wu
Randall J. Lee
2017

Infectious and non-communicable diseases impose a global burden of health on both developing and developed countries despite technological advancements in medicine and healthcare. In this perspective, point-of-care testing (POCT) has been paid attention as an area with enormous potential to solve this problem. Point-of- care molecular diagnostic enables to provide diagnoses from clinical samples to clinicians without wasting time such as sample transporting or sample preprocessing. However, most of nucleic acid diagnostics still are performed in central health facilities because they...

Instrumenting Flexible Substrates for Clinical Diagnosis and Monitoring

Amy Liao
Michel M. Maharbiz
2018

Over the past decade, there has been rapidly growing interest in wearable and implantable devices for a wide range of biomedical applications. For many applications involving prolonged contact with the body, devices that are compliant and can comfortably conform to and move with the patient are highly preferred. These flexible substrates (i.e. clothing, bandages, meshes, catheters, etc) can be instrumented to measure various physiological markers, such as temperature, pH, and oxygenation levels, to better inform clinical care. In this dissertation, I will discuss two examples of...

Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers for Ultrasonic Fingerprint Sensors

Joy (Xiaoyue) Jiang
David A. Horsley
Liwei Lin
Bernhard E. Boser
George C. Johnson
2018

A variety of physical mechanisms have been exploited to capture electronic images of a human fingerprint, including optical, capacitive, pressure, and acoustic mechanisms. Compared to other technologies, ultrasonic fingerprint sensors have two major advantages (1) they are insensitive to contamination and moisture on the finger (2) they have the ability to measure images at multiple depths hundreds of microns from the sensor surface. With the maturity of the thin film piezoelectric materials technology and MEMS-CMOS eutectic wafer-bonding process, piezoelectric micromachined...