Publications

The past decade has witnessed the establishment of a new field of technology concerned with the manufacture of microscopic sensors and actuators, known as Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS). The field of MEMS is based on the use of integrated circuit fabrication techniques to create...

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...

The micromachining technology that emerged in the 1980s has yielded an explosion of developments of micro electromeclianica1 systems (MEMS) in the past two decades. The developments have brought lives to many miniaturized sensors and...

A new micromachined gyroscope based on a vibrating ring is described. The device measures rotation rate or whole angle inertial rotation by monitorying the position of node lines in a vibrating ring. To sense rotation, the ring is electrostatically forced into an elliptically shaped vibration mode and the psoition of the node lines are capacitively monitored. When the device is rotated about the ring center, the node lines, lag behind the rotations due the the Coriolis force. The control and readout circuitry monitors this lag and develops a corrective voltage, that is proportional to the...