Low Noise Opto-Electro-Mechanical Modulator for RF-to-Optical Transduction in Quantum Communications

In this work, we present an Opto-Electro-Mechanical Modulator (OEMM) for RF-to-optical transduction realized via an ultra-coherent nanomembrane resonator capacitively coupled to an rf injection circuit made of a microfabricated read-out able to improve the electro-optomechanical interaction. This device configuration can be embedded in a...

High-performance wafer-scale transfer-free graphene microphones

A repeatable method to fabricate multi-layer graphene (ML-gr) membranes of 2r = 85 - 155 μm (t < 10 nm) with a 100% yield on 100 mm wafers is demonstrated. These membranes show higher sensitivity than a commercial MEMS-Mic combined with an area reduction of 10x. The process overcomes one of the main limitations when integrating graphene...

Sensitive Transfer-Free Wafer-Scale Graphene Microphones

During the past decades micro-electromechanical microphones have largely taken over the market for portable devices, being produced in volumes of billions yearly. Because performance of current devices is near the physical limits, further miniaturization and improvement of microphones for mobile devices poses a major challenge that requires...

Multi-layer graphene Pirani pressure sensors

The operating principle of Pirani pressure sensors is based on the pressure dependence of a suspended strip's electrical conductivity, caused by the thermal conductance of the surrounding gas which changes the Joule heating of the strip. To realize such sensors, not only materials with high temperature dependent electrical conductivity are...

Low power AlGaN/GaN MEMS pressure sensor for high vacuum application

A micro-scale pressure sensor based on suspended AlGaN/GaN heterostructure is reported with non-linear sensitivity. By sealing the cavity, vacuum sensing at various temperatures was demonstrated. To validate the proposed concept of the AlGaN/GaN vacuum sensor, a 700 µm diameter circular membrane was electrically characterized under applied...

Metal and Polymeric Strain Gauges for Si-based, Monolithically Fabricated Organs-on-Chips

Organ-on-chip (OOC) is becoming the alternative tool to conventional in vitro screening. Heart-on-chip devices including microstructures for mechanical and electrical stimulation have been demonstrated to be advantageous to study structural organization and maturation of heart cells. This paper presents the development of metal and polymeric...

MEMS enabled fast time-resolved X-ray diffraction characterization platform for copper nanoparticle sintering in heterogeneous integration applications

We report the design, fabrication and experimental investigation of a MEMS micro-hotplate (MHP) for fast time-resolved X-ray diffraction (TRXRD) study of Cu nanoparticle paste (nanoCu paste) sintering process. The device and its system are designed to have a 60 ms minimum time interval, uniform temperature distribution and variant gas...

A MEMS Actuator System for an Integrated 3-D Optical Coherent Tomography Scanner

In this paper, we present an electrothermal biaxial MEMS actuator system, which provides x-A nd y-direction scanning for a fully integrated 3-D optical coherence tomography (OCT) scanner. An angular scanning range of 8° (corresponding to a 7-mm linear scanning range in both directions) is achieved, with an average power consumption of 150 mW....

6 DOF Force and Torque Sensor for Micro-manipulation Applications

This paper presents the design, fabrication and characterization of a piezoresistive 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) force and torque sensor to be used in micro-manipulation. The mechanical structure of the device consists of 7 suspended beams and a calibration structure, which can be replaced by micro-manipulation tools such as micro-grippers or...

Fabrication of AlN slender piezoelectric cantilevers for highspeed MEMS actuations

Very thin piezoelectric cantilevers based on AlN layers using titanium Ti thin film electrodes are fabricated and characterized. By optimizing the Ti sputtering parameters, a very low stress (156 MPa) layers stack with high crystallinity and strong (002) orientation of the AlN films is obtained. Finally, a simple fabrication process, fully CMOS...

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...

Robust Wafer-Level Thin-Film Encapsulation (Packaging) of Microstructures (MEMS) using Low Stress PECVD Silicon Carbide

This paper presents a new low-cost, CMOS-compatible and robust wafer-level encapsulation technique developed using a stress-optimised PECVD SiC as the capping and sealing material, imparting harsh environment capability. This technique has been applied for the fabrication and encapsulation of a wide variety of surface- and thin-SOI...