Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP) are the two leading causes of blindness in the world today. Despite enormous efforts and advances in clinical treatment of eye diseases, there is no established method or cure of...
Bi-stable buckled MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) diaphragms have a myriad of uses in the MEMS field for their large out-of-plane deflections. Buckling is a phenomenon brought upon by a compressive stress. Diaphragms are large aspect ratio,...
Energy independence requires that the nation reduce its dependence on foreign oil imports. This can be achieved through electrification of transportation vehicles if proper battery technology can be developed. In addition, the renewable energy...
I will report the development of a semi-empirical self-consistent and environment-dependent model Hamiltonian, which is intended to treat large systems in the order of 10000 atoms. This covers a range of important physical phenomena that are too...
In July 1995, National Science Foundation Award # 9551869 funded the development of a new inter-disciplinary microfabrication course under the primary leadership of Dr. Kevin Walsh at the University of Louisville. Along with this award, the...
In the electronic and microfabrication industry, die separation is one of the most critical steps in producing an undamaged, stand-alone micro-scale device. For silicon based devices, it is the predominant step governing resistance to die failure...
In this work, micro fabrication techniques are explored not only to simplify the production of complex lab on-a-chip devices (LOC), but also micro fabrication will be utilized to create intelligent design features that will enhance an...
Microelectromechanical systems; Biotelemetry; Strains and stresses--Measurement
Lumbar arthrodesis or spinal fusion is usually performed to relieve back pain and regain functionality from ruptured discs, disc degenerative disease, trauma and scoliosis. Metal rods are often fixed to the spine with screws or hooks, while fusion...
Microfabricated planar solar cells with an active solar collection area of 0.04cm2 were fabricated on n-type silicon wafers to test the viability of sputtered amorphous thin film photovoltaics for potential use in amorphous multijunction cells or...
Microhotplates for metal oxide gas sensors are fabricated using platinum microheaters and tested. Power consumption is monitored and temperature distributions are observed using infrared microscopy. Temperature line traces are extracted from the...
No current microfabrication technique exists for producing room-temperature, high-precision, point-to-point polymer nanofibers in three dimensions. Producing rounded structures in a third dimension is particularly difficult to accomplish with...
Optical properties of carbon nanotubes have recently attracted considerable amount of attention. Due to there direct band gap material characteristic these and dimension of the order of nano meters they find potential applications in the field of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Acetone--Analysis; Air quality monitoring stations
Zinc oxide (ZnO) based gas sensors with sliver ion exchanged ZSM-5 (Ag+ZSM-5) zeolite overlayer were created and tested for detection of acetone vapor in air. The ZnO and Ag+ZSM-5 films were deposisted on 400µm by 400µm platinum interdigitated...
