A microfabricated normally-closed microvalve consisting of a flat silicon spring, a co-sputtered and patterned TitaniumNickel (TiNi) shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator, and an orifice die, is presented. All three components are batch microfabricated using silicon substrates. This microvalve is designed for an actuation mechanism for a pneumatically controlled, biologically inspired six-legged mi...

Strained-silicon/relaxed-silicon-germanium alloy (strained-Si/SiGe) heterostructures are the foundation of Group IV-element quantum electronics and quantum computation, but current materials quality limits the reliability and thus the achievable performance of devices. In comparison to conventional approaches, single-crystal SiGe nanomembranes are a promising alternative as substrates for the e...

The mechanism for phonon scattering by nanostructures and by point defects in nanostructured silicon (Si) and the silicon germanium (Ge) alloy and their thermoelectric properties are investigated. We found that the thermal conductivity is reduced by a factor of 10 in nanostructured Si in comparison with bulk crystalline Si. However, nanosize interfaces are not as effective as point defects in s...

We discuss an inverse approach for atomistic modeling of glassy materials. The focus is on structural modeling and electronic properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon and glassy GeSe2 alloy. The work is based upon a new approach ‘experimentally constrained molecular relaxation (ECMR)’. Unlike conventional approaches (such as molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo simulations(MC), where a p...

The role of engineering materials in the development of modern technology need not be emphasized. As the levels of technology have become more and more sophisticated, the materials used also have to be correspondingly made more efficient and effective. The increasing use of Aluminium alloy materials in structural and space applications generated considerable interest for the development of tech...

The parallel nano-scanning calorimeter (PnSC) is a silicon-based micromachined device for calorimetric measurement of nanoscale materials in a high-throughput methodology. The device contains an array of nanocalorimeters. Each nanocalorimeter consists of a silicon nitride membrane and a tungsten heating element that also serves as a temperature gauge. The small mass of the individual nanocalori...

The fatigue crack growth in a coarse-grained Fe-2 wt% Si alloy is investigated in considerable detail. At room temperature, the material is quasi-brittle and the failure mode is mixed cleavage. Under a mode-I cyclic loading, the crack can overcome the barrier effect of grain boundaries, which dominates the overall damage evolution. Associated with the geometrically necessary crack front branchi...

The application of Cu-filled through-silicon via (TSV) in 3-D integrated circuit packaging faces several fabrication and reliability issues. In this study, we introduced a Cu-Ni alloy for TSV filling with a high filling speed and a reduced TSV protrusion. In particular, the characteristics of Cu-Ni via protrusions at various annealing temperatures (3200­450°C) were investigated with experimenta...