Richard M. White (Advisor)

Current MEMS microfilter improvement is driven by the need to perform absolute separation of micron-sized particles from milliliter-scale uid volumes. Such filtration is an essential step in many biological and medical applications. For example, routine blood tests require separating blood plasma from whole blood. Using microfabrication techniques it has recently become possible to create integrated miniaturized fluid-handling devices. Promising applications include miniaturized systems for the filtration, fractionation, and manipulation of biological cells and DNA. Before such promise can...

Airborne particulates are responsible for severe adverse effects on human health, examples being the lung disease caused by tobacco smoke and severeasthmatic reactions to certain other particulates. Present instrumentation to measure such particulates is bulky, costly to purchase, and difficult to operate; its use in field studies usually requires sending samples collected to an analytical laboratory in order to identify the particulates. This dissertation describes a...