This research seeks to develop a novel branch of materials systems called Distributed Intelligent Materials Systems (DIMS) which incorporate actuation, sensing, electronics and intelligence as inherent parts of the material structure. A microcantilever optical switch is fabricated as a concept demonstrator with Gallium nitride (GaN) as host material. GaN has several material characteristics whi...

An experimental and theoretical electromechanical characterization of beam-like, uniform cross-section, unimorph structures employing single crystal piezoelectrics is presented. The purpose of the research is to understand and compare the actuation capabilities of several piezoelectric materials and substrate configurations so that optimal design choices can be employed in lightweight, low powe...

Actuation systems for few cubic millimeter sized mobile autonomous robots are subject to severe constraints in terms of e.g. size, fabrication or power consumption. Also the onboard electronics has limited performance due to both size and power restrictions, so actuation voltages, currents and frequency should be minimized. Various principles of electrical to mechanical energy conversion will b...

A novel Spectral Element (SE) is formulated to capture surface acoustic wave (SAW) in layered piezoelectric materials when subjected to mechanical loading or piezo-electrical actuation. Conventional modeling of layers by time domain Finite Elements (FEs) for wave propagation analysis requires solving large systems (as the element sizes should be approximately 8 elements per wavelength). This pr...

The design, identification, and control of a novel, flexure-based, piezoelectric stack-actuated XY nanopositioning stage are presented in this paper. The main goal of the design is to combine the ability to scan over a relatively large range (25× 25 μm) with high scanning speed. Consequently, the stage is designed to have its first dominant mode at 2.7 kHz. Cross-coupling between the two axes i...

Future NASA missions require cooling of large structures in space. One class of thermal management solutions for providing controlled, distributed cooling would utilize actively controlled micro-scale valves that are integrated with heat exchangers and sensors in order to provide independent, local temperature control. The most attractive actuation method for these micro-valves is a multilayer ...

A piezoelectric (PZT) stack-based actuator was developed to provide a means of actuation with dynamic characteristics appropriate for small-scale manipulation. In particular, the design incorporates a highly nonlinear, large-ratio transmission that provides approximately two orders of magnitude motion amplijication from the PZT stack. In addition to motion amplijication, the nonlinear transmiss...

We evaluate two novel reciprocal self-sensing methods for tapping-mode atomic force microscopy (TM-AFM) utilizing charge measurement and charge actuation, respectively. A microcantilever, which can be batch fabricated through a standard microelectromechanical system (MEMS) process, is coated with a single piezoelectric layer and simultaneously used for actuation and deflection sensing. The setu...