[BNC-all] Defense exam: Ankit Jain, July 30th, 2 PM, BRK 1001

[Ankit Jain]

Dear All:

I would like to invite you for my PhD defense examination. The details
are given below-

Thanks
Regards,
Ankit

Date: July 30th, 2014
Venue: Birck 1001
Time: 2-4PM

*Title: **
*
Fundamental Design Principles of Novel MEMSbased "Landau" Switches,
Sensors, and Actuators : Role of Electrode Geometry and Operation Regime

*Abstract: *

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are considered as potential
candidates for "More-Moore" and "More-than-Moore" applications due to
their versatile use as sensors, switches, and actuators. Examples
include: Accelerometers for sensing, RF-MEMS capacitive switches in
communication, suspended-gate (SG) FET in computation, and deformable
mirrors in optics. In spite of the wide range of applications of MEMS in
diverse fields, one of the major roadblocks for MEMS is their
instability. Instability divides the operation regime into stable and
unstable and poses fundamental challenges for several applications. For
example: Tuning range of deformable mirrors is fundamentally limited by
pull-in instability, RF MEMS capacitive switches suffer from the problem
of hard landing, and intrinsic hysteresis of SG-FET puts a lower bound
on the minimum power dissipation.  

In this thesis, we provide solutions to the application specific
problems of MEMS and utilize operation in or close to unstable regime
for performance enhancement in several novel applications. Specifically:
(i) We propose novel device concepts with nanostructured electrodes to
address the aforementioned problems of instability, (ii) We propose a
switch with hysteresis-free ideal switching characteristics based on the
operation in unstable regime, and (iii) We propose a Flexure biosensor
that operates at the boundary of stable and unstable regimes to achieve
improved sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio. In general, we have
advocated electrode geometry as a design variable for MEMS and used MEMS
as an illustrative example of "Landau" systems to advocate operation
regime as a new design variable.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </ECN/mailman/archives/bnc-all/attachments/20140728/fabea544/attachment.htm>