Publications

MEMS Hydrogel Sensors for pH and Glucose Measurements

Supone Manakasettharn
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
2008
A new formulation of a pH-and a glucose-responsive hydrogel was developed and then integrated into an interdigitated MEMS sensor. This new hydrogel was characterized for swelling response as well as for impedance response (resistance and capacitance) when used as both a pH and a glucose sensor. The standard pH-responsive hydrogel, which was a copolymer of 2-...

Micro-Columnated Loop Heat Pipe: The Future of Electronic Substrates

Navdeep Singh Dhillon
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Omer Savas ̧
Ali Javey
2012
The modern world is run by semiconductor-based electronic systems. Due to continuous improvements in semiconductor device fabrication, there is a clear trend in the market towards the development of electronic devices and components that not only deliver enhanced computing power, but are also more compact. Thermal management has emerged as the primary challenge in this scenario where heat flux dissipation of electronic chips is increasing exponentially, but conventional cooling solutions such as conduction and...

Mechanical Energy Storage for Self-Destructing Motes and Jumping Microrobots

Joseph Greenspun
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Vivek Subramanian
Liwei Lin
2018
Mechanical energy storage has been studied to enable a self-destructing mote and ajumping microrobot. Just as chemical energy stored in batteries can be used for a widearray of devices, so too can mechanical energy stored in beams. In this work various energystorage elements are designed, fabricated, and tested to create these MEMS systems. As privacy and data security become increasingly important, new means of keeping that data safe must be developed. A MEMS system has been created to allow a wirelessly enabled...

Monolithic Wireless Transceiver Design

Filip Maksimovic
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Ali M. Niknejad
Stephen D. Glaser
2020

Recently, there has been an increasing push to make everything wireless. In contrast to high-performance cellular communication, where the demand for enormous quantities of data is skyrocketing, these small wireless sensor and actuator nodes require low power, low cost, and a high degree of system integration. A typical CMOS system-on-chip requires a number of off-chip components for proper operation, namely, a crystal oscillator to act as an accurate frequency reference, and an antenna. The primary goal of this thesis...

MEMS Liquid Fuel Delivery for Small-Scale Combustion Power Systems

Sang-Won Park
Albert P. Pisano
Carlos Fernandez-Pello
Andrew R. Neureuther
2008
The lack of a compact and efficient power source, spanning the range from10Watts to 1,000Watts, limits the mobility and usage time of personal devicesThis research has explored Commercially-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) based fuel...

Massively Parallel Optical Manipulation of Single Cells, Micro- and Nano-particles on Optoelectronic Devices

Pei-Yu Chiou
Ming C. Wu
Connie J. Chang-Hasnain
Luke P. Lee
2005
The ability to manipulate biological cells and micrometer-scale particles plays an important role in many biological and colloidal science applications. However, conventional manipulation techniques, such as optical tweezers, electrokinetic forces (electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis (DEP), and traveling-wave dielectrophoresis), magnetic tweezers, acoustic traps, and hydrodynamic flows, cannot achieve high resolution and high...

Magnetic Microactuators with Polysilicon Flexures

Jack William Judy
Richard S. Muller
Seth Sanders
1994

A novel microactuator technology that combines magnetic thin films with polysilicon flexural structures is described. Micromechanical structures, actuated by an off-chip magnetic field, are constructed in a batch-fabrication process that combines electroplatingwith conventional lithography, materials, and equipment. A microactuator consisting of a 400x(47-40)x7μm^3 rectangular plate of NiFe attached to a 400x(0.9-1.4)x2.25μm^3...

Magnetic Field Sensing Using Micromechanical Oscillators

Soner Sonmezoglu
David A. Horsley
Rajeevan Amirtharajah
Xiaoguang “Leo” Liu
2017
Lorentz force magnetic sensors based on micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) resonators, measuring the vector components of the magnetic field, have recently attracted substantial commercial interest in inertial navigation systems (INSs) and compasses for smartphones. Over the last decade, substantial research effort has focused on improving the magnetic field sensitivity and resolution of Lorentz force magnetic sensors relying on either amplitude modulation...

Materials Science and Device Physics of 2-Dimensional Semiconductors

Hui Fang
Ali Javey
Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Junqiao Wu
Eli Yablonovitch
2014

Materials and device innovations are the keys to future technology revolution. For MOSFET scaling in particular, semiconductors with ultra-thin thickness on insulator platform is currently of great interest, due to the potential of integrating excellent channel materials with the industrially mature Si processing. Meanwhile, ultra-thin thickness also induces strong quantum confinement which in turn affect most of the material properties of these 2-dimensional (2-D) semiconductors, providing...

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...