Technology Development for MEMS: A Tutorial

Silicon sensors date back to before 1960 with early Hall and piezoresistive devices. These used simple processing that was part of the early integrated circuit (IC) industry. As the IC industry developed, silicon sensors could benefit from the technological advances. As silicon sensors advanced, there came the need for new technologies...

From Silicon toward Silicon Carbide Smart Integrated Sensors

Self-folding using capillary forces

Self-folding broadly refers to the assembly of 3D structures by bending, curving, and folding without the need for manual or mechanized intervention. Self-folding is scientifically interesting because examples of self-folded structures, from plant leaves to gut villi to cerebral gyri, abound in nature. From an engineering and technological...

Micro-Lens Antenna Integrated in a Silicon Micromachined Receiver at 1.9 THz

This article presents the latest developments of our work related to a micro-lens antenna integrated in a heterodyne receiver using silicon micromachining technology at Terahertz frequencies. The antenna is composed of a waveguide feed which uses a leaky wave cavity to enhance the directivity and illuminate a shallow lens efficiently. The...

An energy-efficient readout circuit for resonant sensors based on ring-down measurement

This paper presents an energy-efficient readout circuit for resonant sensors that operates based on a transient measurement method. The resonant sensor is driven at a frequency close to its resonance frequency by an excitation source that can be intermittently disconnected, causing the sensor to oscillate at its resonance frequency with...

Micro-fabricated channel with ultra-thin yet ultra-strong windows enables electron microscopy under 4-bar pressure

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of (de-)hydrogenation reactions is crucial to characterize efficiency of hydrogen storage materials. The nanoreactor, a micromachined channel with 15-nm-thick windows, effectively confines the gas flow to an electron-transparent chamber during TEM of reactions. Realistic experiments require very high...

A piezo-thermal probe for thermomechanical analysis

Thermomechanical analysis (TMA) is widely used to characterize materials and determine transition temperatures and thermal expansion coefficients. Atomic-force microscopy (AFM) microcantilevers have been used for TMA. We have developed a micromachined probe that includes two embedded sensors: one for measuring the mechanical movement of the...

High-Aspect-Ratio CMOS add-on modules for RF passive components

Commercial wireless communication technologies stemmed mostly from the research done through and after the Second World War as outlined in Chapter 1. Earlier systems were intended for military applications, hence had very high performance and were very expensive and bulky. Later, with the dawn of commercial microwave applications, the systems...

PECVD silicon carbide surface micromachining technology and selected MEMS applications

Attractive material properties of plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposited (PECVD) silicon carbide (SiC) when combined with CMOS-compatible low thermal budget processing provides an ideal technology platform for developing various microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices and merging them with integrated circuits. In this paper we present a...

Micromilling of hardened tool steels

Miniaturized parts are increasingly demanded in different fields like medical, transportation, environmental, and communication industries. In order to manufacture these parts in an economical way, mass replication methods, such as micro injection molding, have to be applied. Currently, Electro Discharge Machining (EDM) process is mainly used to...

Thermal Issues in Micromachined Spiral Inductors for High-Power Applications

An experimental study of the self-heating of micromachined spiral inductors operated under high-power conditions is presented. Typical suspended spiral coils are shown to develop highly elevated temperatures (up to several hundred degrees) under the flow of a moderate to high (> 60 mA) dc current, which often applies to inductors in radio...

Silicon micro-optics for smart light control

We present an overview of the results of our recent research in the field of adaptive optical components based on silicon microtechnologies, including membrane deformable mirrors, spatial light modulators, liquid-crystal correctors, wavefront sensors, and both spherical and aspherical micro-optical components. We aim at the realization of...

Deep anisotropic dry etching of silicon microstructures by high-density plasmas

This thesis deals with the dry etching of deep anisotropic microstructures in monocrystalline silicon by high-density plasmas. High aspect ratio trenches are necessary in the fabrication of sensitive inertial devices such as accellerometers and gyroscopes. The etching of silicon in fluorine-based plasmas is isotropic. To obtain anisotropy the...

Integrated resonant magnetic field sensor

Adaptive mirror micromachined in silicon

Plasma Etching for Integrated Silicon Sensor Applications

Surface Micromachined Capacitive Tactile Image Sensor