Micromolding is a recently developed technique for fabricating parts in the millimeter size range with minimum features and dimensional tolerances less than 10 μm. This degree of precision is achieved by fabricating a master using the LiGA process. The molds made from the master are then filled with powder of the desired material to form parts that are then released from the mold and sintered to high density. Currently, molds are made of either poly(methyl)methacrylate (PMMA) or poly(dimethylsiloxane) (silicone rubber, PDMS). The PMMA molds must be dissolved to release the parts using a solvent that limits the choice of binder used to hold together the powder in the part. The PDMS molds are soft and therefore not suitable for lapping the parts prior to removal from the mold. Recently, two new types of molds materials have been investigated that can be removed utilizing a phase change, either melting or sublimation. The development of these new mold materials, which allow a wider choice of binders, will be described.

Microfluidic and nanofluidic devices often require actuators to induce fluid motion for applications such as pumping and mixing in small channels. Mixing, for instance, is important in systems where channel or chamber dimensions are on the order of 100 μm or larger as diffusive mixing can be prohibitively slow at these dimensions. In this work, a new mesoscale thin film polymer electromechanical actuator is introduced for use in the aforementioned applications. Unlike inorganic piezoelectric actuators, the devices based on these materials will be relatively easy to fabricate involving no high temperature processing, crystal growth, or microlithography. Fabrication of an array of actuators is simply achieved by spin casting the polymer over top of lithographically patterned gold electrodes at a thickness of less than 50 nm. This simple process enables a microfluidic device based on these actuators to be an integral part of a microfluidic channel rather than a separate unit operation. Depending on the application, the actuator array can be designed and controlled for random perturbations of the fluid flow field as required for mixing or for systematic actuation as required for pumping. These thin-film mesoscale actuators have been characterized and show extremely favorable properties such as a high electrostrictive response (compared to none in the bulk) and a frequency response of up to 50 kHz. In addition, finite element simulations show feasibility of these actuators for use in microfluidic mixing applications.

Flexing piezoelectric membranes can be used to convert mechanical energy to electrical energy. The overall deflection of individual membranes is impacted by the residual stress in the system. Membranes comprised of silicon dioxide, Ti/Pt, lead- zirconate- titanate (PZT), and TiW/Au layers deposited on a micromachined boron doped silicon wafer were examined for both morphology and residual stress. By characterizing the membrane residual stress induced during processing with x-ray diffraction, wafer curvature, and bulge testing and identifying methods to reduce stress, the membrane performance and reliability can be optimized. For Zr:Ti ratios of 52:48, the residual stress in the PZT was 350 MPa tensile, with an overall effective stress in the composite membrane of 150 MPa. A reduction of stress was accomplished by changing the PZT chemistry to 40:60 Zr:Ti in the PZT to obtain a stress in the PZT of 160 MPa tensile and an overall effective membrane stress of 100 MPa. The crystallization of the 52:48 PZT film at 700 °C causes a 28% reduction in the thickness of the film.

Molding of Pb and Zn metal plates with LiGA (Lithographie, Galvanoformung, Abformung) fabricated Ni micro-scale mold inserts was carried out with as fabricated Ni inserts and Ni inserts conformally coated with Ti-containing hydrocarbon (Ti-C:H) coatings. The molding performance was characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), in terms of the generated features on the metal plates as well as the inserts condition after molding. The present results demonstrate that, in cases where significant metal/insert chemical interactions exist, surface modification of the mold insert is necessary to obtain satisfactory performance. Furthermore, conformal deposition of suitable engineered ceramic coatings onto Ni micro-scale mold inserts is effective for high temperature micromolding of reactive metals.

This research focuses on the design and experimental characterization of two types of MEMS asymmetrical electrothermal microactuators. Both microactuator design variants use resistive (Joule) heating to generate thermal expansion and movement. Deflection and force measurements of both microactuators as a function of applied electrical power are presented. Also described is the practical integration of the electrothermal microactuators in a monolithic microengine that is capable of rotating a set of gears.

Microcantilever deflection and the membrane deflection experiment (MDE) were used to examine the elastic and fracture properties of ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) thin films in relation to their application to microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Freestanding microcantilevers and membranes were fabricated using standard MEMS fabrication techniques adapted to our UNCD film technology. Elastic moduli measured by both methods described above are in agreement, with the values being in the range 930 and 970 GPa with both techniques showing good reproducibility. The MDE test showed fracture strength to vary from 3.95 to 5.03 GPa when seeding was performed with ultrasonic agitation of nanosized particles.

Semi-empirical (AM1) electronic structure calculations are reported on a pH-switchable [2] rotaxane whose synthesis was reported in [Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 36 (1997) 1904]. The [2] rotaxane possesses two cationic binding sites, with different affinities toward dibenzo [24] crown-8 (the ring component of the [2] rotaxane) depending upon the pH of the system. The computational results capture this pH-sensitive bistability, the key device-like characteristic of the rotaxane.

We present a theoretical study of vacuum effects in systems of length scales of micrometers and nanometers. In particular, we calculate the Casimir force between dielectric plates with different compositions. We show that by an appropriate choice and configurations of materials, the Casimir forces develop noticeable changes than could be used to inhibit or modulate the action of vacuum fluctuations in MEMS and NEMS.

In recent years, there has been a merger of microelectronics and biological sciences to develop integrated nano and micro-scale biosensors or biochips. The implementation of portable, rapid and economic methods for detecting different biological species on a chip will benefit from the development of electronic means for the analysis of cells. Neurons are very attractive as chemical sensors due to their sensitivity to specific toxins and their unique electrical properties. The use of closed well micro-fluidic devices for the growth of neurons has not been explored extensively. In this work, we will describe surface preparation techniques to enhance the neuronal cell viability and growth on microfabricated surfaces. We have fabricated micro-fluidic bio-chips for the trapping of neurons and to examine their growth. Neural cells are maintained in a chamber on the chip with fresh nutrient media continuously flowing through the chamber. The temporal viability of the neural cells within the chip will be reported. The long-term goals of the project include electrically measuring the viability of the cells inside the micro-fluidic chambers.

We have succeeded in making an 870MHz-range thin film bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonator that has a small temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) using secondary harmonics. The 870MHz-range BAW resonator has been requested to have nearly zero TCF, because it will be used in an oscillator for remote keyless entry systems. The BAW resonator has composite structure that consists of Al electrodes and ZnO/SiO2. We directed our attention to the fact that ZnO and Al have negative TCF, and SiO2 has a positive one. It is theoretically possible to make zero TCF BAW resonators by optimizing the thickness ratio of ZnO and SiO2. However, using fundamental resonance, TCF is so sensitive to the thickness ratio that it cannot be easily controlled by MEMS techniques. We founds in finite element method simulation and confirmed by experiment that the TCF of secondary harmonics has a local minimum when changing the ZnO/SiO2 thickness ratio. As the result, a nearly zero TCF resonator without strict control of ZnO/SiO2 thickness ratio has been realized by adopting Al/ZnO/SiO2/ZnO/Al/SiO2 structure and combining thermal oxidized Si and sputtered SiO2. The resonator has the TCF of -1.86ppm/degree in the range of −40 to 85 degrees centigrade.

Integration of dense arrays of high frequency III-V photoemitters and photodetectors with Si platform is one of the challenging tasks for realization of novel chip-level optical interconnects. These interconnects require the resolution of numerous problems of compatibility of materials. Comparison of monolithic and hybrid integration technologies highlights the advantages of hybrid approaches for emitters highly sensitive to growth defects. A novel protocol for fabrication of III-V optoelectronic components on a Si platform is proposed. Reversed vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) structures were grown homoepitaxialy by MBE on a GaAs substrate, and then bonded to a Si wafer using a benzocyclobutene (BCB) polymer. The GaAs substrate was subsequently removed by selective etching down to an AlAs etch stop layer. This reduces thermal stresses in order to enhance the optoelectronic device performance and increase lifetime. A 10 μm-thick high frequency VCSEL with coplanar metallization is processed on Si with PMGI reflow planarization. Electro-luminescence spectrum, I-V and P-T characteristics were measured and compared with a reference structure. It was found that measured thermal resistance is about five times higher than for devices on a host GaAs wafer.

Micromachined pump structures were fabricated using surface micromachining. The structures consisted of three or five connected chambers. Sequential actuation of the diaphragms on these chambers will yield peristaltic pumping. As the actuation material, lead zirconate titanate (PZT [53/47] ) thin films were employed and actuated by interdigitated transducer (IDT) electrodes. First, chambers and channels on the 4″ (100) silicon wafers were defined by reactive ion etching (RIE) and thermally oxidized. The etched structures were then filled with amorphous silicon. Low temperature (silicon) oxide (LTO) and PZT films were then deposited. The LTO and PZT layers act as passive and active layers in a piezoelectric unimorph, respectively. A ZrO2 layer was employed to prevent reaction between SiO2 and PZT layers. A Cr/Au electrode was evaporated on top of the PZT layer and patterned into ring-shaped IDT electrodes. Finally, a porthole at each end of the pump structures was defined by ion milling and the whole micropump structure was released by removing the sacrificial amorphous silicon using XeF2. Completely released 500 μm diameter pump structures were fabricated. The remanent polarizations of the PZT films on released diaphragms were ∼20 μC/cm2 and their coercive fields were ∼50 kV/cm. 500 μm diameter diaphragms were deflected as much as 2 μm with 120 V applied. The shape and behavior of the diaphragm deflection can be explained by considering both d31 and d33 piezoelectric coefficients of the PZT films.

Test structures for piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers have been fabricated and investigated. The basic element consisted of a oxidized and platinized silicon membrane coated with a 2 μm thick (100)-textured Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) thin film deposited by sol-gel techniques. SOI wafers have been applied to obtain a good definition of the silicon part of the membrane. Test devices have been characterized in air and in an insulating liquid.

RF MEMS(Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System) switch technology is one of powerful solution for future RF systems. This technology provides low insertion loss, High linearity and broad bandwidth. Wide driving membrane used MEMS switch can reduce driving voltage but it is easy to bend because of the stress gradient. In order to solve this problem we fabricated Au cantilever in various sputtering condition and various substrate materials. As a result of this experiment, we fabricated cantilever which was bent within 1 um, with 2 um thickness and 340 um length. We applied this condition to RF MEMS switch and we fabricated switch membrane within 1 um bend, under 10MPa stress gradient.

A computational procedure is presented for investigating photo-induced switchable rotaxanes and demonstrated for a known system. This procedure starts with the generation of more than 104 chemically reasonable rotaxane conformations based on an empirical intramolecular potential energy function. Single-point energy calculations at the semi-empirical (AM1) level are carried out for each structure in the singlet (ground), triplet, and anionic doublet states. The structural features are assigned and then correlated with energy for each state. What emerges is a profile of the structure-energy relationship that captures the salient features of the system that endow it with device-like character. Full geometry optimization of a subset of co-conformations (∼1%) demonstrates that the procedure based on single-point calculations is sufficient to obtain a profile of the relationship of structural features to energy that is consistent with experiments, at greatly reduced computational cost.

Although bulk silicon is not known to be susceptible to cyclic fatigue, micron-scale structures made from mono and polycrystalline silicon films are vulnerable to degradation by fatigue in ambient air environments. Such silicon thin films are used in small-scale structural applications, including microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and display “metal-like” stress-life (S/N) fatigue behavior in room temperature air environments. Previously, the authors have observed fatigue lives in excess of 1011 cycles at high frequency (∼40 kHz), fully-reversed stress amplitudes as low as half the fracture strength using a surface micromachined, resonant-loaded, fatigue characterization structures. Stress-life fatigue, transmission electron microscopy, infrared microscopy, and numerical models were used to establish that the mechanism of the fatigue failure of thin-film silicon involves the sequential oxidation and environmentally-assisted crack growth solely within the native silica layer, a process that we term “reaction-layer fatigue”. Only thin films are susceptible to such a failure mechanism because the critical crack size for catastrophic failure of the entire silicon structure can be exceeded by a crack solely within the native oxide layer. The importance of the interfacial geometry on the mechanics of the reaction-layer fatigue mechanism is described.

Single wall carbon nanotubes have aroused a great deal of interest because of their unique combination of electrical, physical and mechanical properties. However, the widespread use of SWNTs in composites and electronic devices is limited because of the difficulty of dispersing and processing these materials. This paper describes a method for depositing and aligning SWNTs from a dispersed solution onto a substrate under the influence of an electric field. Results indicate that SWNTs can be aligned in bulk in the direction of electric field lines, and that individual SWNT ropes may be deposited between two electrodes. The extent and type of deposition depends upon the electrode geometry and processing time. Electrical alignment of SWNTs is an enabling technology allowing manipulation of nanomaterials using standard processing. It could eventually lead to a wide range of products, such as nanocomposites with aligned fillers and nanoelectronic devices.

A size effect is known to exist in the strength and hardness of metals at small length scales. For example, the hardness of a pyramid indentation at the macro-scale is constant and typically independent of indentation size due to the self-similar feature of the indentation. But, at the meso-scale, this hardness has been observed to increase with decreasing indentation size. This increase has been attributed to the influence of strain gradient on the flow stress. At this point, the contribution of a rotational gradient to the hardness is unclear.

This study investigates the sensitivity of the hardness to rotational strain gradients through a Cosserat continuum. Finite element simulation of cone indentation is employed to conduct this investigation. The effect of varying indentation strain fields is modeled using indentation with cones of varying angles. The results demonstrate the role of rotational gradients in indentation.

A new type of gas sensor was developed that combines the principles of bolometric infrared detectors with photonic crystals.1,2 This paper describes a quantitative model used to optimize the materials, geometry, and electrical properties of this suspended membrane MEMS device. Fundamentally the model is concerned with the thermal response of the device using temperature dependent thermal conductivity, specific heat, and electrical resistance to calculate conduction, convection, and radiation losses for a negative temperature coefficient of resistance material. Variations in the electrical drive circuit, dc and ac response, low and high frequency sinusoidal and random noise, along with an exacting calculation of expected signal were used to improve design. The model follows the time evolution of the system. We show how look-up tables with scaling (derived from exact, off-line finite element models for thermal conduction, spectral emission, etc.) provided sufficiently accurate estimates with rapid calculation to enable running the model on a standard PC type computer. The simulations matched the experimental results, accurately predicted the unstable operating regimes, and maximized the signal to noise ratio for the device.

Micromechanical communication circuits fabricated via IC-compatible MEMS technologies and capable of low-loss filtering, mixing, switching, and frequency generation, are described with the intent to miniaturize wireless transceivers. Possible transceiver front-end architectures are then presented that use these micromechanical circuits in large quantities to substantially reduce power consumption. Technologies that integrate MEMS and transistor circuits into single-chip systems are then reviewed with an eye towards the possibility of single-chip communication transceivers.