Publications

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 ...

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...

Crystal-Free Wireless Communication with Relaxation Oscillators and its Applications

David C. Burnett
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Ali M. Niknejad
Lance J. Kriegsfeld
2019

For the last decade, the size of complete 2.4GHz wireless modules containing everythingbut power have stagnated at ~1cm x 1cm. This is despite continued advances in semiconductorprocesses due to components needed by the core communication IC. Breaking this size barrier (which also sets a power and cost barrier) by eliminating all off-chip components is the goal of the Single-Chip Mote project, of which this dissertation is a part. The major componentsto be eliminated are antenna, battery, and crystal...

CMOS Based Chemical Sensors

Dharmesh Bhalchandra Jani
Kristofer S.J. Pister
1995
Detection of chemical species using solid state sensors is of great practical importance. The niche for chemical microsensors exists in places where continuous measurement of a chemical concentration is required from a number of locations. Microsensors...

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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Biochemical Microflow System / Microfabricated Optical Chopper

Michael T. Ching
Richard M. White
Albert P. Pisano
1993

The application of micromechanics to biochemical instrumentation yields many improvements in size, efficiency, and power consumption. The microdevices have small volumes which are compatible with many biochemical reactions. With the addition of integrated sensors, ...

A MEMS Thin Film AlN Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Valve

Ya-Mei Chen
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Tsu-Jae King Liu
Tarek Zohdi
2011
In this thesis, a new piezoelectric valve system with bi-chevron aluminum nitride (AlN) actuator is described. The intended application of the new piezoelectric valve is for the advanced printing technology with supercritical carbon dioxide as the solvent. With supercritical carbon dioxide as the solvent, the ink dissolved will start to nucleate with a micronozzle and generate extremely small and uniform ink particles due to rapid expansion of supercritical...

A Silicon-Based Microsensor to Measure Airborne Contaminants

Bharat M. Shah
Richard M. White
Albert P. Pisano
1994

In this reseach project the ability of a microfabricated acoustic-wave microsensor to detect volatile organic compounds in indoor air was studied. The microsensors were made in the Berkeley Microfabrication facility following designs developed at the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center. The devices were exposed in a four-liter chamber to vapor-phase concentrations of six representative VOCs one at a time: tetrachloroethylene, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, toluene, benzene, ethanol, and formaldehyde. The device sesnitivity to each VOC was computed from the measured oscillator frequency and...