Publications

Design and Analysis of Closed-loop Controlled Parallel-Plate Electrostatic MicroGrippers

Patrick Breckow Chu
Kristofer S.J. Pister
1994

This work describes the design and analysis of a class of sub-millimeter scale grippers. These electrostatically-driven devices are fabricated from polysilicon using an IC-based surface micromachining process and have been designed to handle objects...

Design of Nano-Materials For High Performance Electronic and Sensory Applications

Johnny Chung Yin Ho
Yuri Suzuki
Oscar Dubon
Ali Javey
2009
Device scaling has been one of the main driving forces for technology advancement in the semiconductor industry over last few decades. As this scaling continues into the future, serious fundamental and technological issues will arise as a result of the limitations of conventional device fabrication and materials, etc. Among these many challenges, in particular, there is a tremendous need for new processing technologies to control atomic composition in semiconductor structures as well as the application of new...

Design and Implementation of Sigma-Delta Force-Balance Microaccelerometers

Crist Lu
Bernhard E. Boser
Roger T. Howe
1994

The first goal of this research is to investigate the issues involved in the design of a sigma-delta force- balance surface-micromachined accelerometer. The second goal is to successfully design, fabricate, and test a monolithic m...

Design and Control of Micro-actuators for High Density Disk Drives

Sanjay K. Aggarwal
Roberto Horowitz
1997

A brief discussion of a previously designed parallel plate micro-actuator is provided. Theoretical models for the parallel plate design are then developed to motivate models used in the control design and to illustrate non-linear effects of the parallel plate design. Electrostatic simulations are performed for a...

Design and Analysis of High Quality Factor Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) Diamond Micromechanical Resonators

Mohammad Hadi Motieian Najar
David A. Horsley
M. Saif Islam
Rajeevan Amirtharajah
2014
Diamond is an excellent material for Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) due to its superlative material properties compared to commonly used materials such as silicon. In its single crystalline form, diamond offers properties such as very high Young’s modulus, low thermal coefficient of expansion, and very high thermal conductivity as well as being chemically inert. Specifically, diamond’s high thermal conductivity offers the potential for ...

Direct-Write Piezoelectric Nanogenerator by Near-Field Electrospinning

Chieh Chang
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Seung-Wuk Lee
2009

Electrospinning technology based on the electrostatic driving mechanism can construct long and continuous polymeric nanofibers with diameters less than 100 nm. However, conventional electrospinning process is chaotic by nature. The chaos is manifested in the difficulty to control the deposition position and amount of electrospun nanofibers. In this dissertation, a near-field electrospinning (NFES) process has been developed to deposit solid...

Design and Characterization of a MEMS Piezoelectric Bi-Chevron Actuator

Michael S. Sheppy
Albert P. Pisano
David M. Auslander
2009

Industrial printing today suffers from major drawbacks due to the use of water based inks. Water based inks can bleed and cause warpage of the recording surface. Supercritical carbon dioxide is being investigated as an alternative solvent to water. Supercritical carbon dioxide eliminates many of the drawbacks of water based inks because it undergoes a phase change as it leaves...

CotsBots: An Off-the-Shelf Platform for Distributed Robotics

Sarah Bergbreiter
Kristofer S.J. Pister
David Culler
2004

This thesis presents the CotsBots – inexpensive and modular robots built entirely from commercial off-the-shelf components. These robots provide a convenient platform on which to investigate algorithms, cooperation and distributed sensing in large (greater than 50) robot networks. Each robot is small (13cm x 6.5cm base) and costs approximately $200 in quantity. Each is equipped with on-board processing, radio communication, and a base platform...

Carbon Nanotube-based MEMS Energy Storage Devices

Yingqi Jiang
Liwei Lin
Albert P. Pisano
Constance Chang-Hasnain
2011
Carbon nanotube (CNT) forests have been utilized as electrodes in supercapacitors in this work for energy storage applications. High surface area to volume ratio, good electrical conductivity, and low contact resistance to a bottom metal electrode make CNT forests attractive as electrodes in supercapacitors. Several approaches have been investigated to improve the performances such as configurations, power and energy density of CNT-based supercapacitors, including the single layer architecture by utilizing...

Chip-scale Lidar

Behnam Behroozpour Baghmisheh
Bernhard E. Boser
Ming C. Wu
Liwei Lin
2017

The superiority of lidar compared to radiofrequency and ultrasonic solutions in terms of depth and lateral resolution has been known for decades. In recent years, both application pull such as 3D vision for robotics, rapid prototyping, selfdriving cars, and medical diagnostics, as well as technology developments such as integrated optics and tunable lasers have resulted in new activities

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