Publications

Large, Ordered 3D Nanocup Arrays for Plasmonic Applications

Joanne Lo
David A. Horsley
Jack L. Skinner
2010

A large, ordered nanocup array was fabricated and optically characterized. A novel fabrication method that combined Nanoimprint lithography (NIL), soft lithography, and shadow evaporation was designed to create asymmetric nanoparticles in a large (0.5cm x 1cm) array with subwavelength features. Although this fabrication procedure can be used to create many different types of asymmetric nanostructures that are useful in various plasmonic applications, here we fabricated a periodic nanocup array...

Silicon Electromechanical Microgrippers: Design, Fabrication, and Testing

Chang-Jin Kim
Albert P. Pisano
Richard S. Muller
1991
Microgrippers with jaw spans of l0um have been made from thin films (2um thick) of polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon) by using micromachining technology derived from IC-manufacturing methods. A 500um-long, on-wafer gripper, electrostatically driven by flexible-comb actuators, has been designed, fabricated,...

Impact Actuation of Polysilicon Micromechanical Structures

Abraham Lee
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
1992
Impact on silicon? One may have the experience in dropping a silicon wafer on the floor, and shattering it to pieces. Or trying to dice a wafer by a diamond marker, and accidentally crunching the edges. These experiences may lead...

Controlled Structure Release for Silicon Surface Micromachining

David Monk
David S. Soane
Roger T. Howe
David B. Graves
1993
Silicon surface micromachining is a new technology that uses many of the common microfabrication techniques found in silicon integrated circuit (IC) production. The key processing step that is the sacrificial layer etch for releasing microstructures which is not ...

Micromechanical Investigations of Silicon and Ni-Ti-Cu Thin Films

Peter Krulevitch
George C. Johnson
Roger T. Howe
Kyriakos Kornvopoulos
1994
Residual stress, microstructure, and mechanical properties of low pressure chem cal vapor deposited polycrystalline silicon (undoped and phosphorus doped), selectively grown homoepitaxial silicon, and shape memory Ni-Ti-Cu films are investigated. Different methods...

Micromachined Piezoelectric Cantilever Transducers

Seung Lee
Richard M. White
George C. Johnson
Fai Ma
David S. Soane
1995
In this thesis, we present a micromachined piezoelectric acoustic transducer fabricated on a cantilever. Use of the cantilever as a supporting diaphragm produces a highly sensitive microphone. In addition, when the device is driven electrically as an output transducer (microspeaker), the relatively large...

Micromachined Photonic Devices and Systems on Silicon

Michael Daneman
Kam Y. Lau
Richard S. Muller
Albert P. Pisano
1996
In this thesis we describe design, fabrication, and characterization of micromachined microphotonic systems on silicon. Surface-micromachining technology is used to produce movable optical components such as microreflectors and microgratings. Microhinges...

Micromachined Gyroscope with Integrated Electronics

Per Ljung
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
Andrew K. Packard
1997

The functionality of traditional electromechanical systems can be fulfilled by micromachined sensors with intern electronics while offering several orders of magnitude size and cost reduction. This work presents a micromachined two input axis angular ...

Thin Film Zinc Oxide Microsensors and Microactuators

Don DeVoe
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
Tim Sands
1997
In this work, a variety of piezoelectric sensors and actuators utilizing zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films for electromechanical transduction are presented which rely on surface-micromachining technologies. Specifically, piezoelectric cantilever actuators, open loop accelerometers, and fixed-beam resonant structures are demonstrated using two novel...

Adaptive Servo Schemes using Micromachined Accelerometers for Increased Disturbance Rejection for Magnetic Hard Disk Drives

Satinderpall Pannu
Roberto Horowitz
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
1998

Hard disk drive track widths of 1 um are needed to achieve 10 GBit/in^2. Since it is desired to keep the tracking error below an eigth of the track width, the magnetic hard disk drive servo must maintain the tracking error below 0.12um at the above track width. In a low disturbance environment, some hard disk drive manufactures believe that they can achieve this tracking error accuracy without the addition of new sensors and/or actuators. However, conventional hard disk drives are used in a wide variety of environemtns which subject them to a significant amount of shock and vibrations....