No Arabic abstract
The past few years have seen an increasing focus on energy harvesting issue, including power supply for portable electric devices. Utilize scavenging ambient energy from the environment could eliminate the need for batteries and increase portable device lifetimes indefinitely. In addition, through MEMS technology fabricated micro-generator could easy integrate with these small or portable devices. Several different ambient sources, including solar, vibration and temperature effect, have already exploited [1-3]. Each energy source should be used in suitable environment, therefore to produce maximum efficiency. In this paper, we present an acoustic wave actuated micro-generator for power system by using the energy of acoustic waves, such as the sound from human voices or speakerphone, to actuate a MEMS-type electromagnetic transducer. This provides a longer device lifetime and greater power system convenience. Moreover, it is convenient to integrate MEMS-based microgenerators with small or porta le devices
In this article we describe our efforts of extending demand-side control concepts to the application in portable electronic devices, such as laptop computers, mobile phones and tablet computers. As these devices feature built-in energy storage (in the form of batteries) and the ability to run complex control routines, they are ideal for the implementation of smart charging concepts. We developed a prototype of a smart laptop charger that controls the charging process depending on the locally measured frequency of the electricity grid. If this technique is incorporated into millions of devices in UK households, this will contribute significantly to the stability of the electricity grid, help to mitigate the power production fluctuations from renewable energy sources and avoid the high cost of building and maintaining conventional power plants as standby reserve.
The present study presents a new micro electromagnetic actuator utilizing a PDMS membrane with a magnet. The actuator is integrated with micro coils to electromagnetically actuate the membrane and results in a large deflection. The micro electromagnetic actuator proposed in this study is easily fabricated and is readily integrated with existing bio-medical chips due to its planar structure.
A novel fabrication process, which uses wafer transfer and micro-electroplating technique, has been proposed and tested. In this paper, the effects of the diaphragm thickness and stress, the air-gap thickness, and the area ratio of acoustic holes to backplate on the sensitivity of the condenser microphone have been demonstrated since the performance of the microphone depends on these parameters. The microphone diaphragm has been designed with a diameter and thickness of 1.9 mm and 0.6 $mu$m, respectively, an air-gap thickness of 10 $mu$m, and a 24% area ratio of acoustic holes to backplate. To obtain a lower initial stress, the material used for the diaphragm is polyimide. The measured sensitivities of the microphone at the bias voltages of 24 V and 12 V are -45.3 and -50.2 dB/Pa (at 1 kHz), respectively. The fabricated microphone shows a flat frequency response extending to 20 kHz.
We present a design for a continuous-wave (CW) atom laser on a chip and describe the process used to fabricate the device. Our design aims to integrate quadrupole magnetic guiding of ground state Rb atoms with continuous surface adsorption evaporative cooling to create a continuous Bose-Einstein condensate; out-coupled atoms from the condensate should realize a CW atom laser. We choose a geometry with three wires embedded in a spiral pattern in a silicon subtrate. The guide features an integrated solenoid to mitigate spin-flip losses and provide a tailored longitudinal magnetic field. Our design also includes multiple options for atom interferometry: accomodations are in place for laser-generated atom Fabry-Perot and Mach-Zehnder interferometers, and a pair of atomic beam X-splitters is incorporated for an all-magnetic atom Mach-Zehnder setup. We demonstrate the techniques necessary to fabricate our device using existing micro- and nano-scale fabrication equipment, and discuss future options for modified designs and fabrication processes.
A simple and fast process for micro-electromechanical (MEM) resonators with deep sub-micron transduction gaps in thin SOI is presented in this paper. Thin SOI wafers are important for advanced CMOS technology and thus are evaluated as resonator substrates for future co-integration with CMOS circuitry on a single chip. As the transduction capacitance scales with the resonator thickness, it is important to fabricate deep sub-micron trenches in order to achieve a good capacitive coupling. Through the combination of conventional UV-lithography and focused ion beam (FIB) milling the process needs only two lithography steps, enabling therefore a way for fast prototyping of MEM-resonators. Different FIB parameters and etching parameters are compared in this paper and their effect on the process are reported.