Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) is the application of integrated circuit fabrication technology to the manufacture of micromechanical, optical, electrochemical and biosensor devices. It encompasses a wide range of engineering disciplines. An excellent introduction to MEMS is provided at the MCNC home page at www.mcnc.org and links to other MEMS sites can be obtained through the MEMS clearninghouse at http://mems.isi.edu.

The research program within the group covers a wide range of projects, for example, micromachined ultrasonic transducers; advanced computer aided design tools for MEMS; design and fabrication of an electromechanical latching microvalve; ultrasensitive pressure sensors; curriculum development for MEMS; microfluidic systems for bioanalysis; and impedance based sensors. Funding sources include federal grants, industrial sponsors, and national laboratories.

The core MEMS facility in the Woodruff School include a 1000 square feet class 1000 clean room with 2,400 square feed adjoining laboratory space. MEMS devices are being fabricated in the MiRC clean room and the new facility will complement this by providing nonstandard processing and characterization tools specific to MEMS.

Processing equipment and instrumentation equip the clean room. Currently installed and operating is a Parylene deposition system and two annealing furnaces with controlled ambient. Device characterization is carried out on a Wentworth probe station with four high resolution Alessi/Cascade probes. The following instruments are interfaced to two Pentium-III PCs and controlled through a GPIB bus via HP-VEE: Solatron 1260 impedance analyzer, Solatron 1286 potentiostat, 617 Keithley electrometer, Keithley 195A nanovoltmeter, and a twenty channel HP3970A DVM.

The lab also has a Dimension AFM system with two scanning microscopes, one with custom highspeed electronics for ultrasonic research, and a bioscope with a Zeiss inverted microscope. In addition, a Reichert-Jung Polyvar-Met high-resolution optical microscope is equipped with video capture and image processing tools. Additional instrumentation includes two Stanford Research Systems lock-in amplifiers and an HP oscilloscope.


Primary Academic Faculty

 

Associated Academic Faculty




Research Facilities

  • Clean room for MEMS Fabrication
  • J. Erskine Love Jr. Manufacturing Building
    (Faculty and graduate student offices and labs)
  • Laboratory for the Modification of Nanostructured Interfaces
  • Microelectronics Research Center
  • Nanoscale Thermal Measurement and Manufacturing Laboratory
 

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