Richard M. White (Advisor)

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...

Two processes are developed to fabricate electrostatic comb drives hermetically encapsualted in a silicon nitride or polysilicon micropackage. To fabricate the silicon nitride micropackage, high-doped phosphosilicate glass is deposited, after the electrostatic comb-drive process is complete except for the release etch, and reflowed to form a mould for the silicon nitride microshell. The mould is patterned with a 5:1 BHF wet etch, and then the etch channel layer of phosphosilicate glass is deposited and patterned with a wt etch. The silicon nitride microshell layer is depositied, and holes...