Integrated circuits--Design and construction; Integrated circuits industry--Technological innovations
Lithographic processes for printing device structures on integrated circuits plays a major role in the semiconductor industry. This project aims at designing and fabricating a programmable mask for a direct write lithography system which can...
Over the last 15 years, researchers have explored the use of piezoresistive microcantilevers/resonators as gas sensors because of their relative ease in fabrication, low production cost, and their ability to detect changes in mass or surface stress...
Federal Art Project; Art and social action; Politics in art
This thesis project exhibition brought together Works Progress Administration prints
from the University of Louisville collection, as well as the University of Kentucky Art
Museum and Murray State University. The thirty-three works were...
Liquid gallium (Ga) spontaneously alloys with thin films of metals such as Ag, Au, Pt Al, and Cu at near or even below room temperature resulting in rapid self-assembly of nanostructures. In this dissertation, studies of the formation of these...
The research in this dissertation describes a simple electrochemical approach for fabricating nanoscale (metal/metal) or molecular (metal/polymer or self assembled monolayer (SAM)/metal) junctions. The fabrication involves metal deposition on one...
Symmetric piezoresistive microcantilever beams have been demonstrated in previous research to be capable of sensing the presence of surrounding gas. This occurs as the damping effect of the gas changes the beam resonance behavior. Device...
Understanding of the band structure of the new nano materials is essential to have a deeper insight into their optical and electrical properties. Along with the existing techniques used for characterization of nano-materials, it is also important...
Most of the structures in submillimeter-scale engineering are created from thin films, making them essentially two-dimensional (2D). Significant work has been done to fabricate 3D structures using self-folding, a deterministic form of...
The discovery of carbon nanotubes and subsequently graphene has led to an interest in carbon materials as sensing elements due to their unique properties. Graphene is a 2-dimensional material that has a large surface area that can be exposed to...
This dissertation demonstrates an elegant method, known as 'micro-origami' or strain architecture to design and fabricate three-dimensional MEMS structures which are assembled using actuation of a metal-oxide bilayer with conventional planar...
Protective coatings; Microelectromechanical systems
PARYLENE (poly-para-xylylene) is mostly used as a conformal protective polymer pin-hole free coating material to uniformly protect any component configuration on diverse substrates. This thesis describes in detail how the unique properties of...
In this dissertation, standardized methods for measuring electron emission (EE) from nanostructured materials are established. Design of an emitter array platform, synthesis and nanomanipulation of different types of are successfully conducted....
The application of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has captivated the curiosity of today's experts due to the escalating potential in the field of electronic detection of biomolecules. Their extreme environmental sensitivity and small size make them ideal...
In this thesis self-assembled growth of Ag2Ga nano-needles on batch fabricated
micro-grippers are reported. The room temperature growth of Ag2Ga nano-needles have
been recently developed as stylus for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Integration...
A process for fabricating PMOS transistors and test devices has been developed for educational purposes as part of a microfabrication undergraduate/graduate laboratory course at the University of Louisville. This is to help students from multiple...
This dissertation describes new procedures for synthesizing and purifying Au and Au/Ag nanoplates directly on surfaces as well as controlled binding of proteins to their surface. It also describes fundamental changes in the optical properties of Au...
Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is an electrokinetic force capable of attracting or repelling neutrally charged particles due to a non-uniform electric field [1, 2]. Positive dielectrophoresis attracts particles in the region of the highest electric field...
The thesis focuses on improving the flowrate of the Knudsen gas pump. The Knudsen pump uses thermal transpiration as the driving mechanism to pump gas. It is a motionless gas pump as the pump does not require any moving actuators for pumping. The...
Rapid Electrokinetic Patterning (REP) is a relatively new method for collecting and manipulating micrometer-scale particles at an electrode surface. REP is an AC electrokinetic technique that uses induced fluid motion to capture and manipulate...
The Knudsen pump works on the principle of thermal transpiration. As a result of requiring a thermal gradient, channel hydraulic diameter smaller than the mean free path of the gas being pumped, and having no moving parts, the Knudsen pump features...
