The design of RF MEMS switches involves several disciplines: mechanics, materials science and electrical engineering. While significant progress has been made in the RF design of the switches, mechanical and material studies are required for mass commercialization of reliable devices. Senturia and co-workers at MIT have presented a closed form solution to describe the electromechanical behavior...

Charge-coupled device ~CCD! area x-ray detector technology is reviewed. CCD detectors consist of a serial chain of signal components, such as phosphors, fiber optics or lenses, image intensifiers and the CCD which serve to convert the x-ray energy to light or electron-hole pairs and to record the spatially resolved image. The various combinations of components that have been used to make CCD de...

Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), by their nature as sensors and actuators, require application specific packaging. The package is the near environment of the MEMS device and hence has a direct effect on its thermal behavior, on mechanical effects, and on environmental compatibility and contamination. Therefore, understanding the influence of the packaging on MEMS device performance is cri...

We report on an instrument for applying ac and dc magnetic fields by capturing the flux from a rotating permanent magnet and projecting it between two adjustable pole pieces. This can be an alternative to standard electromagnets for experiments with small samples or in probe stations in which an applied magnetic field is needed locally, with advantages that include a compact form-factor, very l...

Power Consumption and Competitive Advantage Minimizing power consumption is one of the most critical design goals for portable wireless devices. Heat dissipation due to undesirable power requirements affects product reliability and product life. Most important, and one of the few things the average consumer understands, is the useable time of the device between battery charges. Longer operating...

This paper examines the reliability of RF MEMS switches when operational temperatures in the range -60C to 100C are envisioned. The basic operation of a capacitive MEMS switch is described and two tools to examine device reliability, modeling and on-chip experimentation, are discussed for the case of capacitive MEMS switches. 1-D, 2-D and 3-D models are presented with emphasis on 3-D coupled-fi...

The charge reduction effect, produced by the nonlinear Debye screening of high-Z charges occuring in strongly-coupled plasmas, is investigated. An analytic asymptotic expression is obtained for the charge reduction factor (fc) which determines the Debye-Hückel potential generated by a charged test particle. Its relevant parametric dependencies are analyzed and shown to predict a strong charge r...

Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) of pMOS structures is a critical reliability concern for modern semiconductor devices. We propose and evaluate an enhanced NBTI model with the following additions to the standard reaction-diffusion (RD) model [1] (a) coupling to the semiconductor device equations to self-consistently include the oxide field, surface hole concentration, charged carrie...

PURPOSE We report the novel use of 3-charge coupled device camera technology to infer tissue oxygenation. The technique can aid surgeons to reliably differentiate vascular structures and noninvasively assess laparoscopic intraoperative changes in renal tissue perfusion during and after warm ischemia. MATERIALS AND METHODS We analyzed select digital video images from 10 laparoscopic partial ne...