category » MEMS & BioMEMS

DNA-templated Assembly of Droplet-derived Microtissues
  • Paracrine and autocrine cell signaling are critical factors guiding tissue development and maintenance, and dysregulation of these cues contributes to…


AC Variability Characterization of MOSFETs
  • The high-frequency variability characterization of MOSFETs is becoming more necessary due to new process developments such as high-K metal gates,…


An On-Chip Test Circuit for Characterization of MEMS Resonators
  • Electromechanical resonators such as quartz crystals, surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators, and ceramic resonators have become essential components in electronic…


Micro-contact Printed MEMS
  • It is desirable to extend the functionality of MEMS to different form factors including large area arrays of sensors and…


Malaria-diagnostic System Based on Electric Impedance Spectroscopy
  • Malaria prevails mainly in the countries that lack proper medical facilities, and it kills about a million people worldwide a…


Automated Passive Dynamical Model Extraction of Thin Film Bulk Acoustic Resonators (FBAR) for Time Domain Simulations
  • Thin Film Bulk Acoustic Resonators (FBARs) are widely used in the design of modern radio frequency components including duplexers, filters,…


Single-cell Trapping and DNA Damage Analysis Using Microwell Arrays
  • DNA damage has been found to play critical roles in cancer, aging, and heritable disease.  There is rising interest in…


Continuous Signal Enhancement for Sensitive Aptamer Mobility Shift Assay Using Electrokinetic Concentration
  • Aptamers are emerging as popular alternatives to antibodies as affinity probes in immunoassays. From a point-of-care diagnostics standpoint, aptamers have…


Dynamic Cell Deformability Study in Microfluidic Devices
  • The mechanical properties of tissues and cells have important implications on their differentiated state, functions and responses to injury. Altered…


An Integrated Microfluidic Probe for Concentration-enhanced Selective Single Cell Kinase Activity Measurement
  • We present an integrated microfluidic probe that captures the contents of selected single adherent cells from standard tissue culture platforms…


Microfluidic Platforms for Studying the Role of the Biophysical and Cellular Microenvironment in Tumor Invasion
  • Tumor invasion has received considerable attention as a critical step in cancer metastasis, and is a promising target for developing…


Thermal Ink Jet Printing of PZT Thin Films
  • We recently demonstrated a process of thermal ink jet printing of PZT thin films for MEMS applications [1] [2] . …


Piezoelectric Transducers for Advanced Ultrasound Imagining Systems and Energy Harvesting
  • In this project, a piezoelectric 2-D array of ultrasound transducers will be developed for compact, portable 3-D ultrasound imaging systems….


Design of Low-frequency, Low-g, Nonlinear Resonating Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters
  • To overcome the limitations of piezoelectric energy harvesters such as narrow bandwidth and low power density, our group has recently…


MEMS Pressure-sensor Arrays for Passive Underwater Navigation
  • A novel sensing technology for unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) is under development. The project is inspired by the lateral line…


MEMS Space Thrusters: The ion Electrospray Propulsion System (iEPS)
  • Electric Propulsion (EP) brings benefits for space missions requiring relatively large changes in satellite velocity, for example by reducing the…


Suspended Microchannel Resonators with Piezoresistive Sensors
  • Precision frequency detection has enabled the suspended microchannel resonator (SMR) to weigh single living cells, single nanoparticles, and adsorbed protein…


Continuous Microbioreactors
  • For systems biology, the models are more often limited by the absence of reliable experimental data than by available computational…


Controlling the Intrinsic Stresses in Polycrystalline Metallic Films for N/MEMS Applications
  • Polycrystalline metallic thin films are vital in a wide variety of applications, including microelectronics, plasmonics, magnetic storage, N/MEMS and catalysis. …


MEMS Langmuir Probes for Atmospheric Reentry Plasma Diagnostics
  • One of the most fundamental technical problems concerning spacecraft design is preparing the vehicle to survive the extreme conditions encountered…


Scaling of High Aspect Ratio Current Limiters for the Individual Ballasting of Large Arrays of Field Emitters
  • Field Emitter Arrays (FEAs) are excellent cold cathodes, but they have not found widespread adoption in demanding device applications because…


Batch-micromachined RPAs for Plasma and Ion Measurements
  • Retarding potential analyzers (RPAs) were first developed in the 1960’s.  RPAs find widespread application including characterization of near-spacecraft environments and…


Electron-impact-ionization Pump Using Double-gated Isolated Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Arrays
  • There is a need for microscale vacuum pumps that can be readily integrated with other MEMS and electronic components at…


Near-ultraviolet Sensor Based on Horizontal Low-Temperature Solution-Grown Zinc Oxide Nanowires
  • A near-ultraviolet (UV) sensor based on zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires (NWs) that is sensitive to photo excitation at or below…


Massively Parallel Microfluidic Cell-pairing Platform for the Statistical Study of Immunological Cell-cell Interactions
  • Many immune responses are mediated by cell-cell interac­tions. In particular, cytotoxic T cells form conjugates with pathogenic and cancer cells…


Cell-based Sensors for Measuring Impact of Microsystems on Cell Physiology
  • The use of microsystems to manipulate and study cells in microenvironments is continually increasing.  However, along with such increase in…


Microfluidic Perfusion for Modulating Stem Cell Diffusible Signaling
  • Stem cell phenotype and function are influenced by microenvironmental cues that include cell-cell, cell-extracellular matrix (ECM), and cell-media interactions, as…


Micropatterning of Cells to Study Autocrine Signaling
  • Autocrine signaling is a mode of chemical signaling that occurs when cells can capture self-secreted diffusive factors.  Apart from its…


Iso-dielectric Separation of Cells and Particles
  • The development of new techniques to separate and characterize cells with high throughput has been essential to many of the…


Image-based Sorting of Cells
  • Microfabricated/microfluidic approaches to cell sorting, include purely dielectrophoretic (DEP) trap arrays [1] , passive hydrodynamic trap arrays with active DEP-based…


Flexible Multi-site Electrodes for Moth Flight Control
  • Significant interest exists in creating insect-based Micro-Air-Vehicles (MAVs) [1] [2] [3] that would combine advantageous features of insects—small size, effective…


High-flux Pool Boiling with Micro-engineered Surfaces
  • The mechanism of critical heat flux (CHF) is commonly attributed to two limits during boiling behavior: 1) the hydrodynamic limit…


Acoustic Bragg Reflectors for Q-enhancement of Unreleased MEMS Resonators
  • Two of the greatest challenges in MEMS are those of packaging and integration with CMOS technology. Development of unreleased MEMS…