Search results

The characteristics of fluid motions in micro-channel are strong fluid-wall surface interactions, high surface to volume ratio, extremely low Reynolds number laminar flow, surface roughness and wall surface or zeta potential. Due to zeta potential, an electrical double layer (EDL) is formed in the vicinity of the wall surface, namely, the stern layer (layer of immobile ions) and diffuse layer (layer of mobile ions). Hence, its competent designs demand more efficient micro-scale mixing mechanisms. This paper aims to therefore carry out numerical investigations of electro osmotic flow and mixing in a constricted microchannel by modifying the existing immersed boundary method.

The numerical solution of electro-osmotic flow is obtained by linking Navier–Stokes equation with Poisson and Nernst–Planck equation for electric field and transportation of ion, respectively. Fluids with different concentrations enter the microchannel and its mixing along its way is simulated by solving the governing equation specified for the concentration field. Both the electro-osmotic effects and channel constriction constitute a hybrid mixing technique, a combination of passive and active methods. In microchannels, the chief factors affecting the mixing efficiency were studied efficiently from results obtained numerically.

The results indicate that the mixing efficiency is influenced with a change in zeta potential (ζ), number of triangular obstacles, EDL thickness (λ). Mixing efficiency decreases with an increment in external electric field strength (Ex), Peclet number (Pe) and Reynolds number (Re). Mixing efficiency is increased from 28.2 to 50.2% with an increase in the number of triangular obstacles from 1 to 5. As the value of Re and Pe is decreased, the overall percentage increase in the mixing efficiency is 56.4% for the case of a mixing micro-channel constricted with five triangular obstacles. It is also vivid that as the EDL overlaps in the micro-channel, the mixing efficiency is 52.7% for the given zeta potential, Re and Pe values. The findings of this study may be useful in biomedical, biotechnological, drug delivery applications, cooling of microchips and deoxyribonucleic acid hybridization.

The process of mixing in microchannels is widely studied due to its application in various microfluidic devices like micro electromechanical systems and lab-on-a-chip devices. Hence, its competent designs demand more efficient micro-scale mixing mechanisms. The present study carries out numerical investigations by modifying the existing immersed boundary method, on pressure-driven electro osmotic flow and mixing in a constricted microchannel using the varied number of triangular obstacles by using a modified immersed boundary method. In microchannels, the theory of EDL combined with pressure-driven flow elucidates the electro-osmotic flow.

Considering its vast utility in industries, this paper aims to present a detailed review on fundamentals, classification and progresses in pressure sensors, along with its wide area of applications, its design aspects and challenges, to provide state-of-the-art gist to the researchers of the similar domain at one place.

Swiftly emerging research prospects in the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) enable to build complex and sophisticated micro-structures on a substrate containing moving masses, cantilevers, flexures, levers, linkages, dampers, gears, detectors, actuators and many more on a single chip. One of the MEMS initial products that emerged into the micro-system technology is MEMS pressure sensor. Because of their high performance, low cost and compact in size, these sensors are extensively being adopted in numerous applications, namely, aerospace, automobile and bio-medical domain, etc. These application requirements drive and impose tremendous conditions on sensor design to overcome the tedious design and fabrication procedure before its reality. MEMS-based pressure sensors enable a wide range of pressure measurement as per the application requirements.

The paper provides a detailed review on fundamentals, classification and progresses in pressure sensors, along with its wide area of applications, its design aspects and challenges, to provide state of the art gist to the researchers of the similar domain at one place.

The present paper discusses the basics of MEMS pressure sensors, their working principles, different design aspects, classification, type of sensing diaphragm used and illustration of various transduction mechanisms. Moreover, this paper presents a comprehensive review on present trend of research on MEMS-based pressure sensors, its applications and the research gap observed till date along with the scope for future work, which has not been discussed in earlier reviews.

The purpose of this paper is to design an out-of-plane micro electro-thermal-compliant actuator based logic gates which work analogously to complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) based logic gates. The proposed logic gates used a single-bit mechanical micro ETC actuator per logic instead of using 6-14 individual transistors as in CMOS.

A complete analytical modelling is performed on a single ETC vertical actuator, and a relation between the applied voltage and the out-of-plane deflection is derived. Its coupled electro-thermo-mechanical analysis is carried out using micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) CAD tool CoventorWare to illustrate its performance.

This paper reports analytical and numerical simulation of basic MEMS ETC actuator-based logic gates. The proposed logic gate operates on 5 V, which suits well with conventional CMOS logic, which in turn reduces the power consumption of the device.

The proposed logic gates uses a single-bit MEMS ETC actuator per logic instead of using more transistors as in CMOS. The unique feature of this proposed logic gates is that the basic mechanical ETC actuator is customized in its structure to function as specific logic gates depending upon the given inputs.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel method of coaxial optical precision alignment based on surface roughness and reflectiveness matching.

The micro-assembly experiment system set-up was constructed according to the principle of the coaxial optical alignment. The coaxial optical alignment error is theoretically analyzed and calculated. When the prism orthogonal alignment mechanism produces the error of 0.001°, the theoretical deviation was less than 0.87 μm and the actual experimental micro-assembly platform assembly accuracy exceeded 3 μm. A peg-in-hole precise assembly of punching pin micro-assembly experiment was done in order to validate feasibility of this method.

The results indicate that coaxial optical precision alignment could be used for the assembly of complex micro-heterogeneous system which is integrated by similar devices, such as 3D complex micro-structures, silicon micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) devices and non-silicon MEMS devices with flat structure.

The paper provides certain methodological guidelines for MEMS for high precision automatic assembly of complex 3D micro-structures.

The purpose of this research paper is to develop and analyze micro-electro-mechanical systems sensor for vibration monitoring of pumping aggregate.

The system is based on smart sensor and smart mobile phone.

The numerous measurements on a wide range of turbo aggregates were performed to establish the operating condition of pumping aggregates.

Afterwards, the influence of vibration at different positions on the output vibration of the pumping aggregate was analyzed by adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system method.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the fabrication technology and test of thermo-pneumatic actuator utilizing Si₃N₄-polyimide thin film membrane. Thin film polyimide membrane capped with Si₃N₄ thin layer is used as actuator membrane which is able to deform through thermal forces inside an isolated chamber. The fabricated membrane will be suitable for thermo-pneumatic-based membrane actuation for lab-on-chip application.

The actuator device consisting of a micro-heater, a Si-based micro-chamber and a heat-sensitive square-shaped membrane is fabricated using surface and bulk-micromachining process, with an additional adhesive bonding process. The polyimide membrane is capped with a thin silicon nitride layer that is fabricated by using etch stop technique and spin coating.

The deformation property of the membrane depend on the volumetric expansion of air particles in the heat chamber as a result of temperature increase generated from the micro-heater inside the chamber. Preliminary testing showed that the fabricated micro-heater has the capability to generate heat in the chamber with a temperature increase of 18.8 °C/min. Analysis on membrane deflection against temperature increase showed that heat-sensitive thin polyimide membrane can perform the deflection up to 65 μm for a temperature increase of 57°C.

The dual layer polyimide capped with Si₃N₄ was used as the membrane material. The nitride layer allowed the polyimide membrane for working at extreme heat condition. The process technique is simple implementing standard micro-electro-mechanical systems process.

The “Snap back” problem of the micro‐cantilever remains one of the dominant failure mechanisms in the Micro Electro‐mechanical System (MEMS). By analyzing the Hamaker micro continuum medium and solid physics principle, the consistency model of Wigner‐Seitz (W‐S) continuum medium is presented. The gap revision coefficients of the body with the face‐centered cubic structure are derived, which include the attractive force and the repulsive one. The adhesion model of the 500 µ m X 1 µ m silicon micro‐cantilever coated by Au is established. The micro‐cantilever static relationship between the elastic force and the adhesion force is discussed. The reason of the microcantilever “snap back” problem, an instable balanced point, is discovered. Increasing the rigidity of the micro‐cantilever, a method to avoid the micro‐cantilever “snap back” to happen, is put forward, which improves MEMS structure design and enhances MEMS reliability.

In this work, the sensing and actuating elements are designed with interdigitated capacitors away from the sensitive element on which the droplet is placed. This pattern helps to prevent interference of electrical elements with the droplet. Choosing shear resonance mode at this proposed structure minimizes the damping effect of droplet touch by the resonator structure. The glass-based standard fabrication method of the proposed biosensor is presented exactly.

Mechanical resonator sensors are extremely limited because of the high damping factor and the high electrical conductivity in the aqueous environment. In this work, a molecule detector biosensor is proposed for droplet analysis, which is possible to fabricate using micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. By electromechanical coupling of resonators as a mechanical resonator structure, a standing mechanical wave is formed at this structure by electrostatic actuating elements.

In this paper, a mechanical resonator structure as a biosensor is proposed for micro-droplet analysis that can be fabricated by MEMS technology. It is designed at a lower cost fabrication method using electrostatic technology and interdigitated capacitors. The response of the biosensor displacement frequency at the resonance frequency of the desired mode is reasonable for measuring the capacitive changes of its output. The mass sensitivity of the proposed biosensor is in the range of 1 ng, and it has a large sensitive area for capturing target molecules.

To evaluate the quality of the proposed design, the stimulated analysis is conducted by COMSOL and results are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to model multilayer structure surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors, incorporated in CMOS or micro‐electro‐mechanical system integrated circuits, and to derive the corresponding wave velocity as an analytic expression in terms of the layers‘ thickness and density, which is suitable for analysis and design.

The method is based on an electro‐mechanical equivalent model of multilayer structure SAW sensors. A multilayered SAW device is represented by a two‐port electrical equivalent circuit consisting of three parts: input transducer, output transducer, and between them the delay line, which is the sensing part. The sensing part is modelled as a mechanical two‐port network. The wave velocity is calculated using analogy between the mechanical and electrical quantities and the fact that the wave motion of the SAW extends below the surface to a depth of about one wavelength.

The presented model predicts very efficiently and accurately the velocity of SAW sensors with multilayer substrates in the case where the thicknesses of upper layers are much smaller than the signal wavelength. The velocity can be calculated from the formula, so that elaborate numerical computations involving partial differential equations are avoided.

The model and the velocity calculation can be applied only to acoustically thin upper and middle layers where acoustically thin means that a layer is sufficiently thin and rigid (large shear modulus). The presented results provide a starting‐point for further research in the analysis and design of sensors fabricated using AlGaN, GaN, AlN/diamond.

Since the majority of SAW sensors is designed with acoustically thin layers, the proposed model and calculation can be of interest for many practical material combinations. The presented model and calculation can be used in most cases of the optimal sensor design with respect to the sensor sensitivity or required area on the sensor chip.

The paper presents a new original model of multilayer structure SAW sensors and a new method of SAW velocity calculation. The method gives good results, with much simpler calculations than in the wave equation method, in cases where certain layers are acoustically thin.

The purpose of this paper was to study the combined effect of hygro and thermo-mechanical behavior on a plastic encapsulated micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) package during the reflow process after exposed to a humid environment for a prolonged time. Plastic encapsulated electronic packages absorb moisture when they are subjected to humid ambient conditions.

Thus, a comprehensive stress model is established for a three-axis accelerometer MEMS package, with detailed considerations of fundamentals of mechanics such as heat transfer, moisture diffusion and hygro-thermo-mechanical stress. In this study, the mold compound is considered to be the most critical plastic material in MEMS package. Other plastic components of thin film materials can be disregarded due to their small sizes such as die attach and Bismaleimide Triazine (BT) core, even though they are also susceptible to moisture. Thus, only the moisture-induced properties of mold compound were obtained from the proposed experiments. From the desorption measurement after preconditioning at 85°C/85 per cent relative humidity (RH), the saturated moisture content and diffusivity were obtained by curve fitting the data to Fick’s equation. In addition, a new experimental setup was devised using the digital image correlation system together with a precision weight scale to obtain the coefficient of hygroscopic swelling (CHS) at different temperatures.

The experimental results show that the diffusion coefficient of mold compound material follows Arrhenius equation well. Also, it is shown that the CHS of mold compound increases as temperature increases. Experimentally obtained moisture properties were then used to analyze the combined behavior (thermo-hygro-mechanical) of fully saturated MEMS package during the reflow process using a finite element analysis (FEA) with the classical analogy method. Finally, the warpage and stresses inside the MEMS package were analyzed to compare the effects of hygroscopic, thermal and hygro-thermo-mechancal behaviors.

In this study, unlike the other researches, the moisture effects are investigated specifically for MEMS package which is relatively smaller in scale than conventional electronic packages. Also, as a conjugated situation, MEMS package experiences both humid and temperature during the moisture resistance test. Thus, major objective of this study is to verify stress state inside MEMS package during the reflow process which follows the preconditioning at 85°C/85 per cent RH. To quantify the stresses in the package, accurate information of material properties is experimentally obtained and used to improve modeling accuracy.