PhD Thesis Defence

High-Performance Multilevel Class-D Audio Amplifiers

Huajun Zhang

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PhD Thesis Defence

Low-temperature nanoparticles sintering technology in heterogeneous integration

Dong Hu

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Past events:

Microelectronics colloquium

Running large EU projects: Intelligent Reliability (iREL40)

Willem van Driel

Running large EU projects: Intelligent Reliability (iREL40)

Intelligent Reliability 4.0 (iRel40) is a 102MEuro European funded project with the ultimate goal of improving reliability of electronic components and systems by reducing failure rates along the entire value chain. The project finalized in December 2023 and achieved significant results, strengthening production along the value chain and supporting the sustainable success of investment in microelectronics in Europe through the improvements of the reliability of electronic systems. More than 100 publications based on journal and conference articles were published or are under preparation including a book on the iRel40 outcome. In this presentation, Prof van Driel will highlight the main findings of the project. Also, he will share how to set-up and run such large EU projects.

Reference: www.irel40.eu

Willem van Driel has a >30-year track record in the reliability domain. Application areas range from healthcare, gas and oil explorations, semiconductors and my current position in Signify where I am responsible for Solid State Lighting reliability. Besides that, he holds a professor position at the University of Delft, The Netherlands. His scientific interests are solid state lighting, microelectronics and microsystems technologies, virtual prototyping, virtual reliability qualification and designing for reliability of microelectronics and microsystems. He acts as the chair for the organizing committee of the IEEE conference EuroSimE and has authored and co-authored more than 350 scientific publications, including journal and conference papers, book or book chapters and invited keynote lectures. He holds 20 patents. He is a certified DFSS Black Belt.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Integrated Technologies for Smart Catheters

Jian Li

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PhD Thesis Defence

Printed spark ablation nanoparticle films for microelectronics applications

Joost van Ginkel

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ECTM Master thesis event

ECTM Master thesis event


Dear Master students,

the ECTM section of the Microelectronics department is happy to present its research activities, collaborations with many industrial partners and available Master thesis projects to you.
In this event, you will discover our works in M/NEMS, sensors, biodevices, novel materials, power IC design, microelectronic packaging and reliability, and more from fellow students and the ECTM staff!

Come join us!
We will have food and drinks too :-)


Thinking of attending, or looking for more information?
Please register or inquire by sending us an email at secr-ectm.ewi@tudelft.nl

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MSc thesis defence

Organ-on-Chip platform for Vascularisation of Cortical Brain Organoids with Transient Membrane

Friso Kahler


THz Symposium

Dutch Symposium on Terahertz Science and Technology - 3rd Edition


You are cordially invited to join us for the third edition of the Dutch Terahertz Symposium on January 25, 2024. It is a co-organized event between the Delft and Eindhoven University of Technology. With these series of symposiums, we aim to create an environment to exchange information and allow the Dutch Terahertz community to find collaborations and funding opportunities.

 

The 2024 Dutch Terahertz Symposium aims to bring together the Dutch research community and industry interested in the field of terahertz science and technology. There will be six featured talks from both academic and industrial institutions about the latest developments in the field. You can find the list of speakers and topics attached to this email. There will be plenty of opportunities for interaction with each other and inspired further community building.

 

Save the date to join a full day of interesting presentations, Q&As, and panel discussions!

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Wireless Biodegradable Strain Sensor for Hip Implant Applications

Nikita Gopakumar

Summary

Hip replacement surgery, also termed total hip arthroplasty, is a surgical intervention intended to substitute a deteriorated or dysfunctional hip joint with an artificial prosthesis. This procedure is commonly indicated for individuals experiencing severe hip discomfort resulting from conditions like osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, hip fractures, or other hip-related issues that significantly impair mobility. Globally, more than 1 million total hip replacement surgeries are conducted annually. Given the substantial mechanical loads experienced by hip implants during regular activities, a thorough understanding and early identification of potential issues before implant failure are imperative. Continuous monitoring of strain is crucial to assess how the implant responds to various stresses over time. This monitoring aids in evaluating the implant’s durability and performance under diverse stress conditions, enabling proactive interventions, if necessary, to prevent critical failures.

Strain monitoring acts as a diagnostic tool to assess the implant’s status and the surrounding tissues. Deviations in strain patterns may signify problems such as implant loosening, wear, or bone loss around the implant. Moreover, this monitoring technique helps customize rehabilitation programs and recommend specific activities based on individual strain levels. Consequently, this tailored approach enhances recovery outcomes while mitigating associated risks.

This project involves the development of a passive wireless sensor designed to detect strain on hip implants for early failure detection. The fabrication of this sensor employs cleanroom techniques and protocols to ensure precision and reliability in its structure


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

3D microelectrode integration in a muscle-on-chip device

Ramón Carballás Boluda

Abstract. The current drug development process is a costly effort both in terms of budget and time. Organ-on-Chip (OoC) technologies are rapidly developing and are used for various applications and studies that aim to reduce the costs of this process. They represent the convergence between tissue engineering and microfluidic technology to provide researchers with an in vitro tool that can better recreate the environmental conditions in which cells would normally develop in vivo. One of the applications of this tool is the implementation of such platforms to study heart and muscle tissue. Electrical stimulation of this tissue is of great importance for these studies. There exist different ways in which these cells can be electrically stimulated such as microelectrode arrays (MEAs) or external electrodes. These methods pose several challenges that need to be addressed.

The scope of this project is to implement 3D microelectrodes into an already existing device from the company Bi/ond to electrically stimulate the cells developing inside. This approach aims to solve the existing challenges in current methods for the electrical stimulation of tissue. This project succeeded in developing such 3D microelectrodes although the functionality of the device could not be proven. However, several approaches were also studied and propositions were made on how to continue with this project


Microelectronics Research Day 2023

Microelectronics Research Day 2023


TU Delft Microelectronics Research Day
Fully booked!
Registering 2023 not for possible anymore

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EE-NL Day

EE-NL Day


EE-NL Day

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Airflow sensors for flapper MAV drone

Laveena Manjunath


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Inductively coupled plasma deep reactive ion etching of high aspect ratio structures on 4H-SiC for MEMS applications

Zhenhua Zhang


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Dead time control circuit in monolithic GaN class-D audio amplifier

Jing Pan


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Warpage Analysis on Power Module Ceramic Substrates.

Chieh Wang

Abstract

In power module substrates, stacking multiple copper and ceramic layers with significant differences in CTE can lead to warpage issues during manufacturing. Warpage, induced by temperature variations, presents a risk of cracks and delamination within the devices.

The main objective of this project is to understand and address the warpage phenomenon in AMB substrates of power modules. The project investigates the cause of the warpage phenomenon, involves the FEM simulation validated through practical manufacturing process experiments, and implements the optimization design.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Characterization of solder joint degradation under board-level reliability tests for vibration and thermal cycling

Letian Zhang

Abstract:

Board-level reliability (BLR) looks at the reliability problem in the package and PCB interconnection, which is an important topic in microelectronics. The current criterion in the BLR test is to look if the connection is open, which can only detect the failure and there is no available method that can detect the degradation of the solder joints. This project mainly focuses on the degradation process of solder joints in board-level vibration tests and thermal cycle tests. Two kinds of test vehicles are adopted in this project, one is a QFN56 package equipped with a four-wire resistance measurement circuit and the other one is a piezoresistive  sensor, which can figure out the changes in stress distribution over two solder joints. Special methods and test programs are developed tailored for the two aforementioned test vehicles, and some of the test results are collected and analyzed. Assisted by the failure analysis technique, the cross-section of the solder joint can be viewed and the crack length can be measured. Findings in this study show the parameter shift during the solder joint degradation and also the mathematic model that describes the relationship between the crack length of the solder joint and resistance increment in electrical measurement. Moreover, with the statistical tools, we find the potential method that can considerably decrease the BLR test time by changing the failure criteria.

Daily advisors: Varun Thukral, Adwait Inamdar

Supervisor: prof. Willem van Driel


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Optimizing sensitivity of capacitive pressure sensors through improved intraocular pressure monitoring

Kiana Griffith

Abstract: This thesis analyzes and describes a wearable pressure sensor to detect intraocular pressure and guide clinician diagnosis of glaucoma. Although glaucoma has many symptoms and risk factors, high intraocular pressure is the most predominant. A method to continuously and accurately record intraocular pressure measurements and fluctuations in a patient could lead to a more reliable glaucoma diagnosis and a better understanding of glaucoma progression. The proposed sensor consists of an ecoflex dielectric layer, between two graphene-silver nanowire spiral antenna electrodes which also act as the membrane structure. The sensor deflection depends on the intraocular pressure fluctuations; higher pressure leads to larger deflection values, therefore, larger capacitance change. The capacitance change leads to a shift of the resonant frequency, which is simulated in this thesis. The sensor must be smaller than 11 mm2 to fit on a commercial lens. Specifically, this thesis analyzes and simulates the effects of electrode thickness and shape on the overall performance of the sensor. The optimum geometry of the capacitive sensor is analyzed to maximize sensor sensitivity and quality factor, with a correlated frequency appropriate for a wearable lens. Using Computer Simulation Technology, the optimized antenna dimensions are spiral-electrodes with a plate thickness of 350μm, and 3 spiral revolutions; leading to an increase in sensitivity of 1.4 MHz/mmHg.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Portable microfluidic chip perfusion and heating solution for high-magnification optical microscopy

Vladimir Leshko


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design and fabrication of a smart vaporizing liquid microthruster for cubesat applications

Georgios Spernovasilis


PhD Thesis Defence

Ionic electroactive polymer for organs-on-chip applications

Paul Motreuil-Ragot

Additional information ...


ME colloquium

Towards fully- electric organs-on-chips

Massimo Mastrangeli

Organs-on-chip are microsystems aiming to recapitulate a relevant part of human physiology in vitro within an engineered in vivo-like microenvironment. This technology sits at the convergence of tissue engineering and microfabrication, and has the potential to advance our knowledge of human physiology and enhance along the way the current drug development process. As I will illustrate in the seminar, the specific approach we pursue at ECTM targets the design and development of innovative organs-on-chip, whose multi-material and scalable fabrication processes allows to integrate electrical sensing and actuation functionalities within the devices. By making them more compact, easier to use, and ultimately autonomous, we aim to foster a wider adoption of the organs-on-chip in research and industry, and to contribute to educate a new generation of biotechnological scientists.

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

A miniature sensorized platform for engineered heart tissue

Milica Dostanic

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Understanding the Fundament of Virus Inactivation via Modelling

Chunjian Tan


Symposium

Heterogeneous system integration - Driving the EU Chip Act ambitions

The Netherlands have a strong national ecosystem for quantum, photohics and semiconductor technologies, well connected to international key players. This symposium aims to build on this strength by intensifying collaboration among these domains.

Heterogeneous integration plays a crucial role in enabling future quantum, photonics and semiconductor technologies by creating new functionalities and business opportunities through the integration of different chips, technologies and materials into a single system.

This symposium will discuss the importance of heterogeneous integration and its potential for creating more industry and business value. It also aims to cultivate human resources for heterogeneous integration, further strengthening the Dutch ecosystem.

Join us to explore the exciting opportunities that heterogenous system integration can offer for the Dutch ecosystem and beyond, and to be part of the conversation on driving the EU Chip Act ambitions.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Two-photon polymerization-based 3D-multi-electrode arrays for electrical monitoring of neuronal cells

Thomas Michalica

Abstract:

3D-multi-electrode arrays (3D-MEAs) are needed to overcome the limitations of 2D-multi-electrode arrays (2D-MEAs) and enable the electrical characterisation of 3D neuronal cultures in in-vitro brain models, advancing the understanding of neurological disorders and paving the way to personalized medicine. The aim of this thesis was to overcome some of the limitations of current 3D-MEA devices and develop structures approaching the stiffness of the brain microenvironment, by using materials softer than conventional Silicon.

A polymeric 3D-MEA was designed and developed by means of an innovative combination of two-photon polymerisation (2PP), a 3D printing technology with sub-micrometer resolution, and standard wafer-level microfabrication methods from the semiconductor industry. Two novel fabrication protocols were developed, the first being a combination of 2PP with high-aspect ratio photolithography, which, though feasible, proved to require an inconveniently laborious process flow. The second fabrication process employed instead 2PP to fabricate the polymeric structures, pattern the microelectrodes, and provide electrical insulation. The 2PP-based process flow was ultimately preferred due to its potential for fabrication of structures of higher aspect ratio and geometrical  complexity for 3D-MEA, extending their measurement resolution. Furthermore, a wafer-level alignment routine was developed with an alignment repeatability of 2PP structures of ±5 µm, which enabled the multistep 2PP fabrication process. A novel maskless photolithography via 2PP process was also developed to pattern thin films over slanted surfaces, utilizing photoresist and glycerol-based immersion optics.

The resulting 3D-MEA consisted of 15 printed polymeric pyramids featuring a total of 60 gold microelectrodes. The electrical insulation of the traces was partially successful, and will require further process development. The results demonstrate the feasibility of merging, for the first time, the 2PP process with standard wafer-level microfabrication techniques, specifically for the fabrication of a 3D-MEA for in-vitro studies of iPSC neuronal cultures.

The 2PP-based solutions provided in this thesis show a promising pathway for the development of more complex and biomimetic 3D-MEAs. More generally, the developed wafer-level alignment routine and maskless photolithography via 2PP process for high-aspect ratio structures contribute to advance the field of microfabrication, and may enable the development of other types of innovative microdevices.


PhD Thesis Defence

Pressure-assisted Cu Sintering for SiC Die-attachment Application

Xu Liu

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Graphene with platinum nanoparticles for neural recording and stimulation

Samantha Rice

Link for streaming: Click here to join the meeting


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Fabrication of 3-Dimensional Electrode for a Heart-on-Chip Application

Shirley Kannan


PhD Thesis Defence

Integrated silicon carbide sun position sensor system-on-chip for space applications

Joost Romijn

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design, Production and Characterisation of an LPCVD-Based Poly-Silicon Carbide Pressure Sensor for Extreme Environment

Tom Salden


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

HV power MOSFET embedding

Rami Younis


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Characteristics of BioMEMS polymers

Silvana van der Voort


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Vacuum sealing of MEMS cavities using nanoparticle sintering

Mustafeez Bashir Shah


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Towards a readout for capacitive displacement sensor in a an engineered heart tissue device

Filippo Pfaiffer


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Ultrasound Tracking and Data telemetry using CMUTs

Sai Sandeep Lolla


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Wearable Ultrasound for Respiratory Monitoring in the Intensive Care Unit

Annemijn Hintzen


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Temperature sensor based on 4H Silicon Carbide Bipolar Junction Transistor with Measurement Range up to 400 Degree Celsius

Michaël Chengshang


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design of a membrane for a lung-on-a-chip device

Sophie den Boer


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A Low-Noise Transimpedance Amplifier for Ultrasound Imaging with 40dB Continuous-Time Gain Compensation

Qian Wang

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for miniature 3D ultrasound probes. Time gain compensation (TGC) is required to provide continuously variable gain and compensate for the attenuated echo signal, resulting in decreased output dynamic range (DR). As TGC is embedded in the LNA, a power-hungry LNA is no longer needed to handle the full dynamic range of attenuated echo signal. Compared to prior art where TGC is applied after the LNA, this structure reduce die area and power consumption greatly.

The LNA with built-in TGC functionality is comprised of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) with exponentially increasing feedback resistive network. Since a transducer with a relatively high impedance is targeted, a TIA is utilized to interface with the tranducer and sense the signal current. TGC is implemented in a continuous fashion by tunable resistors so as to alleviate imaging artifacts associated with gain switching moments. The resistive feedback network is achieved by triode transistors with exponentially decreasing gate voltages. Three parallel branches of triode transistors are varied simultaneously to obtain 40dB gain range. Each branch consists of two back-to-back triodes to mitigate non-linearity related to the body effect.

The variable-gain loop amplifier employing a current-reuse topology enables constant closed-loop bandwidth in an energy-efficient way. The first stage is a fixed-gain stage with dynamic biasing to save power at the lowest gain setting. The next two stages are variable-gain stages with variable resistive loads. The load resistor is implemented in the same fashion as the TIA’s feedback resistor to achieve intrinsic gain matching. The last stage is a buffer to provide low output impedance for stability.

The LNA has been designed in 0.18 μm CMOS technology and occupies an estimated die area of 0.0339 mm2. The effective gain range is 40 dB with ±1 dB gain error. The LNA’s noise floor at the highest gain is below 1.15 pA/rt-Hz and its harmonic distortion is better than -40 dB. During 100 μs receive period, the total power consumption is 6mW from a ±0.9 V supply. The LNA featuring small area and high power efficiency is a promising circuit for miniature 3D ultrasound probes.


Microelectronics Colloquium

Advances in Low-Field MRI Hardware Design and Data Processing

Rob Remis

In this talk we discuss several recent advances in low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). We focus on magnet and gradient coil design for a low-field MR scanner in which the strong background field is generated by permanent magnets (Halbach systems). These design problems are treated as inverse source problems, which are severely ill-posed in general. How to obtain approximate (regularized) solutions to these problems is discussed and the practical implementation of these solutions is addressed as well. Several processing algorithms that can handle compressed noisy MR input data are also presented and we illustrate the performance of these algorithms on simulated and measured low-field MR data.

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Concentrating and inactivating the surrogate of SARS Cov-2 using electric fields on planar micro-chip electrodes

Devashish Mantri


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Spark Ablated Metal Oxide Nanoparticles for Gas Sensing

Esad Beydilli


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Flip-chip nanometallic interconnects with self-aligned underfill

Weiping Jiao


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Route towards large thin power Mosfet die mechanical robustness

Nikhil Gupta


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Threshold instability and trap modelling in SiC MOS capacitor

Jinglin Li


Microelectronics Colloquium

Sparsity-constrained Linear Dynamical Systems

Geethu Joseph

Abstract: At the intersection of control engineering and signal processing sits the upcoming field of sparse control and state estimation of linear dynamical systems. It deals with linear dynamical systems with control inputs having a few nonzero entries compared to their dimensions. Constraining the inputs to be sparse is often necessary to select a small subset of the available sensors or actuators at each time instant due to energy, bandwidth, or physical network constraints. Bringing together research from classical control theory and compressed sensing, the talk presents a comprehensive overview and critical insights into the conceptual foundations of sparsity-constrained systems, including the formulation, theory, and algorithms. We look at the concrete example of a budget-constrained external agent controlling the opinion of a social network.

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Integrated Transceiver Circuits for Catheter-based Ultrasound Probes and Wearable Ultrasound Patches

Mingliang Tan

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Ronald Dekker

Thesis: link

Collegerama link (live stream of the defence): link

Abstract: This thesis describes the design, prototyping, and experimental evaluation of transceiver ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) for catheter-based ultrasound probes and wearable ultrasound patches. Various circuit techniques are proposed to address requirements and implementation bottlenecks in these applications. Prototype chips are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques. To reduce the loading effect of micro-coaxial cables in an ICE probe based on capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs), an ASIC prototype including element-level high-voltage pulses and low-noise trans-impedance amplifiers has been implemented. Besides reducing the loading effect from micro-coaxial cables, ASICs play an important role in achieving cable-count reduction, which is crucial for 3-D imaging catheters, such as forward-looking IVUS probes. Circuit techniques are proposed to implement a prototype ASIC which only requires 4 cables to interface with a 2D piezoelectric transducer array. Additionally, to address the challenges in interface electronics for wearable ultrasound patches, a prototype ASIC is presented that contains 64 reconfigurable transceiver channels that can interface with different transducer elements by employing channel-parallelizing techniques.

Additional information ...


Special EI Colloquium

Piero Tortoli, Michael Kraft

Profs. Piero Tortoli and Michael Kraft

Real-time High-Frame Rate imaging: Novel Methods and Applications

Prof. Piero Tortoli
Microelectronics Systems Design Laboratory
University of Florence, Italy

Medical imaging is increasingly based on High-Frame-Rate (HFR) methods, which are in principle capable of producing one frame (or even one data volume) per transmission event. However, achieving such a goal in real-time implicitly involves the transfer and processing of huge amount of data at high rates, and this can be done only through an appropriate experimental setup.

In this talk, the main characteristics of the hardware-based open scanner ULA-OP 256 are briefly reviewed, and its recent advancements, such as the data transfer acceleration obtained through an architectural change, and the possible expansion toward the control of an unlimited number of probe elements, are reported in detail. The “virtual real-time” modality will also be described as ideal to obtain the best performance from specific HFR imaging modalities. Finally, the combination of ULA-OP 256 with properly designed sparse 2-D arrays will be shown suitable for the investigation of full volumes. The talk will be concluded with the presentation of experimental results in a few sample applications, including multi-plane imaging, HFR CFM and HFR vector Doppler.

 

Micro- and Nanosystems at ESAT, KU Leuven

Prof. Michael Kraft
ESAT, Micro- and Nano-Systems
KU Leuven, Belgium

This seminar will give an brief overview of the activities in micro- and nanosystems at the Electrical Engineering Department (ESAT) of KU Leuven. It will describe the available infrastructure and give a short overview of current research activities in the division Micro- and Nanosystems (MNS), which currently comprises 24 PhD students, 4 postdoctoral researchers and 2 technicians.

A selection of current active projects and recent highlights will be presented, including work on:

  • Coupled resonators for mass sensing applications
  • Piezoelectric ultrasound technology arrays for medical imaging and underwater communication
  • Micromachined probes for neuro recording and stimulation
  • Multi-parameter sensing chip for bioreactor condition monitoring
  • Genetic Algorithm for the design of MEMS devices (accelerometers and microgrippers)

Finally, the newly founded Leuven Institute for Micro- and Nano Integration (LIMNI) will be briefly introduced.

Note: This Colloquium precedes the PhD defence of Mingliang Tan, which will take place in the Aula on the same day at 12:00 (layman’s talk), 12:30-13:30 (defence). More information can be found here.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design and characterization of a wireless power transfer system for optogenetic ambulatory defibrillation

Bram den Ouden


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A 3D Printed Soft Actuated Pupil Expansion Device for Cataract Surgery

Oualid Zoumhani

Link to defence


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Biodegradable magnetic actuator for mechanical stretching of cells in organs-on-chip

Zhengwei Liao


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Gas Sensor based on array of Multi-layer Graphene (MLG) Decorated with Metal/Metal Oxides nanoparticles (NPs)

Hanxing Meng

To attend online: use this link


IEEE Sensors Young Professionals June Webinar

Energy Autonomous Environmental Sensors

Anton Köck
Material Center Leoben, Austria

You are invited to the IEEE Young Professionals Engagement Series (YES) which is organized by the IEEE Sensors Council YP Committee. It is a pleasure to announce the next speaker in this webinar series.

Speaker:  Dr. Anton Köck, Key Researcher & head of the Sensor Solution Group, Materials Center Leoben, Austria

Date: June 30, 2022

Time13:00 Central European Time

RegistrationFree, but required. Register using the Google Form link mentioned below.

Google Form Link: https://forms.gle/6eeStfXBthbKnHQC8.

You will be sent the meeting link after you register: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86889096934?pwd=a214YkVvU21wbVpwQVNwanRraFdRUT09

 

Title: Energy Autonomous Environmental Sensors

Abstract: Nowadays ~90% of time is spent indoors; thus, air quality monitoring has become of increasing importance to check for potential indoor and outdoor pollutans, which have a negative impact on our health. For providing an area wide air quality monitoring, the optimum would be an IoT capable network of energy autonomous sensor systems which harvest and store the energy for daily operation. This presentation will mostly focus on air quality sensors, the operating principle and the state-of-the-art on the market. We will show our approach in optimizing chemical sensor devices by use of nanomaterials and how we integrate several devices to multi sensor system. Finally, we will discuss the requirements and challenges for energy autonomous sensor systems.

About the Speaker: Anton Köck studied Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. After a Post Doc position at the Technical University Munich, he was head of the Optoelectronics research group at the Institute for Solid State Electronics, Vienna University of Technology, where he habilitated in the field of Optoelectronics in. He was a professor for Physics and Material Science at the Wiener Neustadt University for Applied Sciences. Next, he was Deputy Head of the business unit Nano Systems, Austrian Institute of Technology, in Vienna, where he established the research on gas sensors based on nanomaterials. Since 2013 he is Key Researcher at the Materials Center Leoben  and is head of the Sensor solution group. Anton Koeck has more than 230 publications and conference contributions and has been the General Conference Chair of the EUROSENSORS 2018 conference.


Seminar on Wide-bandgap semiconductor technology and industry

This seminar will highlight the state of the art of technology and industry of wide bandgap semiconductors (WBS), which are becoming the cornerstones of future power electronics, communication (5G and beyond) and optoelectronics.

WBS have not only many grand scientific challenges, but also vital economic and societal impact for today and the future. This seminar consists of presentations by global leading experts from both academia and industry, and a panel discussion with key stakeholders from Dutch semiconductor eco-system.

Location: Lecture room Chip (Building 36)

For more information: Program flyer

Register before the 10th of June: secr-ectm-ewi@tudelft.nl

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Light dosage optimization in antifungal blue light therapies by experiments and modeling

Tianfeng Wang

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Quasi-vertical gallium nitride diodes for power microwave applications

Yue Sun

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Monolithically fabricated flexible graphene-based active implant

Tawab Karim

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Wafer-scale fabrication of transfer-free graphene-based condenser microphones

Leonardo di Paola


Sensors and CMOS Interface Electronics

Would you like to learn about smart sensors and interface circuits? Register for our course “Sensors and CMOS Interface Electronics”, co-organized by TU Delft and MEAD Education.

The course will take place online, on 8 days between May 9 and May 20, with two lectures per day timed conveniently for participation from anywhere on the globe.

Topics include smart-sensor design, calibration techniques, references, offset-cancellation, analog-to-digital conversion, instrumentation amplifiers and energy harvesting. Moreover, the course features lectures by experts in the field dedicated to smart inertial sensors, magnetic sensors, temperature sensors, image sensors, ultrasonic sensors, capacitive sensors, implantable medical devices and DNA microarrays.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Characterization and processing of elastomers for organ-on-chip applications

Jilian Schoonhoven


PhD Thesis Defence

Functional materials for silicon gas sensors

Manjunath Ramachandrappa Venkatesh

Additional information ...


Microelectronics Colloquium

An inclusive EEMCS faculty: An emphatic approach.

Jorge Martinez

Our faculty consists of a vibrant and diverse community. Diversity is a catalyst that allows us to achieve broad knowledge, and a base upon we can drive scientific innovation and improve education.

Moreover, diversity is one of the core values of TUDelft and our faculty and comes with great responsibility. Without equality and inclusion diversity becomes an empty gesture. But realising a safe, equal and inclusive environment requires the participation of everyone in our community. It starts by having a dialog, stablish communication channels at different levels, and debunking taboos with respect to the visible and invisible differences among each other and our students. An empathic approach for this process can play a key role in realising this ambition.

In this colloquium Jorge talks about his experience within EDIT: EEMCS Diversity & Inclusion Team. Join us to know more about EDIT, and for an informal discussion on the current advancements on addressing issues like harassment, discrimination, and gender (in)equality. Or if you want to know what are the channels and means within our faculty and our University to reach for advice or help in case you encounter any issues related to these important topics.

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Technology platform for advanced neurostimulation implants: the "Chip-in-Tip" DBS probe

Marta Kluba

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Superconducting funnelled through-silicon vias for quantum applications

Juan Alfaro Barrantes

Additional information ...


PhD Thesis Defence

Multi-physics driven electromigration study: multi-scale modeling and experiment

Zhen Cui

Additional information ...


ME colloquium

Biodegradable technologies for medical applications

Clementine Boutry

This presentation will be dedicated to biodegradable technologies. Such devices are designed to work for a defined period of time, and then reabsorb naturally without leaving a trace. They are entirely degradable, including the electronics, and are of great interest both for medical and environmental monitoring applications.

Several projects will be described in detail, including biodegradable pressure sensor arrays for cardiovascular monitoring, stretchable strain and pressure sensors for in vivo orthopedics, biodegradable wireless artery pulse sensors for monitoring of vessel anastomosis and a bioinspired e-skin, detecting the direction of applied pressure for robotics. Future research directions will also be discussed, focusing on soft biodegradable materials with tailored electrical/magnetic properties, and their integration into organ-on-chips, sensors, antennas and soft robotics.

If you would like to join, send an email to ewi-me-secr@tudelft.nl and you will receive the TEAMS link

Additional information ...


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design of moisture vapor pressure sensor for popcorn failure analysis in molding compound

Shuhan Yang

The public defence can be streamed at the following address:

https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/92358651366?pwd=bk5pSXFuK1lwUzJOYnRMSForNE4vZz09

Meeting ID:923 5865 1366
Passcode:189993


MSc Thesis Presentation

Characterization of an electroactive polymer for diaphragm micropump in organs-on-chip

Sudiksh Srivastava

Abstract

The existing drug development process is economically and scientifically challenging. It fails to efficiently emulate human physiology in-vitro with the current pre-clinical studies which includes in-vitro cell culture
models and animal testing. Organ-on-Chip (OoC) technology aims to recreate in-vivo-like micro environment to investigate drug response more effectively. There are ongoing attempts to fabricate OoC technology as a single-platform micro-device to minimize its reliance on external components.
In this perspective, the functionality and throughput of this technology can be improved. One such novel approach is addition of an ionic electroactive polymer (iEAP) actuated diaphragm micropump.

The primary aim of this thesis project was to determine the suitable dimensions of a micro cantilever iEAP, specifically Ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) to generate appropriate flow rate for the projected diaphragm micropump. In addition to that, dynamics of the IPMC cantilever actuator
is examined in dry environment. To achieve this, the actuator tip - force, tip-displacement, and longevity tests were performed. The results at macroscopic scale were attempted to explain with molecular characteristics of the material.

As result, it was shown that IPMC cantilever actuators at small scale possess viscoelastic properties
and standard beam theory cannot be used to validate the experimental
results. Secondly, the actuation results for 0.1 and 1 Hz align with
the input driving frequency. The IPMC cantilever of length 7 mm generates
the maximum tip-force of 0.138 mN and it is suggested to be used as a
diaphragm actuator for the upcoming micropump.

NB: The public presentation can be streamed at the following address: Zoom link


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Secil Sanseven


Microelectronics Colloquium

On my personal journey into artificial intelligence

Justin Dauwels

In this presentation, I will start with a brief introduction to artificial intelligence (AI). I will then elaborate on two types of AI approaches that our research team is investigating: graphical models and neural networks. Next I will summarize some of the main research results of our group. I will review some of the applications of AI that we have been working on over the years, and will present some of our future research plans. I will also say a few words about the spin-off companies that have emerged from our research group. At last, I will conclude with a few thoughts on the potential impact of AI on society and will formulate a few important open research questions in the field of AI.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Organ-on-chip-integrated impedance spectroscopy for blood-brain-barrier integrity analysis

Lovro Ivancevic


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Shreyas Shankar


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Board Level Vibration Testing and Qualification for Automotive Applications

Chinghsuan Chou

Revolutionary changes in automotive industry toward fully connected electrical vehicles is changing the world of Board Level Reliability (BLR) Vibration Testing. It is taking BLR Vibration tests beyond board level to board module application level. This defense will showcase development of a reliability test concept called Board Module level Vibration Testing that is required to cope with the challenging application driven requests.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Analysing the properties and applications of wafer-scale mono-layer graphene

Shivendra Kaushik Chilagani

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A multi-organ-on-chip platform with integrated oxygen and TEER sensors for the brain-gut axis

Stijn Robben

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Multifunctional UV-C LED Virus Inactivation Experimental Platform

Xinyun Xu

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PhD Thesis Defence

In-pixel temperature sensors for dark current compensation of a CMOS image sensor

Accel Abarca Prouza

This thesis describes the integration of temperature sensors into a CMOS image sensor (CIS). The temperature sensors provide the in-situ temperature of the pixels as well as the thermal distribution of the pixel array. The temperature and the thermal distribution are intended to be used to compensate for dark current affecting the CIS. Two different types of in-pixel temperature sensors have been explored. The first type of temperature sensor is based on a substrate parasitic bipolar junction transistor (BJT). The second type of temperature sensor that has been explored is based on the nMOS source follower (SF) transistor of the same pixel. The readout system that is used for the temperature sensors and for the image pixels is based on low noise column amplifiers. Both types of in-pixel temperature sensors (IPTS) have been designed implementing different techniques to improve their accuracy. The use of the IPTSs has been proved by measuring three prototypes chips. Also, a novel technique to compensate for the dark current of a CIS by using the IPTS has been proposed.

For those who cannot attend, you can follow it by using this link:
https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/84dc9775142d44db81aa38e5532c67ca1d


PhD Thesis Defence

Prognostics and Health Management of safety relevant electronics for future application in autonomous driving

Alexandru Prisacaru

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PhD Thesis Defence

Design and processing of Silicon and Silicon Carbide Sensors

Brahim Mansouri

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Improving electrical characteristics of graphene neural electrode

Merlin Palmar

Abstract

Neuroscientists use neural electrodes to explore the working mechanisms of the nervous system. Therefore, ideal electrodes should have a small size and the ability to record and stimulate at a single cell resolution with low noise. Materials used for fabrication should be flexible and stable for a long period in the biological media. However, conventional recording and stimulation techniques do not have sufficient spatiotemporal resolution for neuroscience research. Combining electrical and optical modalities into one device helps overcome the resolution limits and record more detailed information. For this application, transparent conductive materials are needed.

Graphene is a potential solution due to its advantageous combination of properties, such as high conductivity, transparency, and flexibility. However, important characteristics of recording and stimulation electrodes, such as the impedance and charge injection capacity of graphene electrodes, do not reach the levels of conventional materials. The electrical characteristics of graphene could be improved further with surface modification, chemical doping, or stacking. Each method has been shown to improve the conductivity of graphene, although some affect the transparency of the layer.

In this work, three methods were used to improve the electrical characteristics of multilayer graphene neural electrode without losing transparency or flexibility. These methods include growing a thicker layer of graphene, adding metal nanoparticles to the surface of the electrode, and nitric acid doping of graphene. For that purpose, graphene electrodes were fabricated on a silicon wafer. The electrical characteristics of these electrodes were assessed with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry and four point probe measurements. Furthermore, the optical transmittance was measured. The improvement methods were then tested on these electrodes, and the performance was evaluated.

Adding metal nanoparticles to the surface of the electrode showed the most promising results. With gold nanoparticles, the impedance at 1 kHz was lowered 82%, and charge storage capacity increased 529%. However, at the same time, 30% of the optical transmittance was lost. With lower nanoparticle density, 6% of transmittance was lost, and 7% of impedance gained. Nitric acid doping did not improve the impedance, but the charge storage capacity was increased up to 66%. Thicker layers of graphene displayed a lower sheet resistance. However, impedance or charge storage capacity were not improved.

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MSc ME thesis presentation

Advanced optoelectronics driver system for biomedical applications

Shanliang Deng

Abstract:

With the development of biomedical technology such as optogenetics, optoelectronics devices, especially light-emitting diode(LED), becomes wildly used in biomedical researches and applications. Unlike traditional illumination and display applications, biomedical applications have more unique requirements like intensity and response speed. The existing optoelectronics systems cannot fulfil all the requirements of biomedical applications. It is essential to design particular light sources and drivers to fill the blank area of biomedical-compatible optoelectronics systems. However, each biomedical application has its environment and setup. One specific optoelectronics system will not suitable for all circumstances. This work focuses on developing a methodology to design advanced optoelectronics driver systems for biomedical applications to solve this problem.

It takes three steps to develop and verify the driver design methodology. The first step is producing a high-power biomedical array driving system to verify the array control strategy. UVC virus inactivation test platform, which successfully finishes virus inactivation test in Erasmus MC, is produced in this step. The second step is extending the array driver to the matrix driver. An interactive optoelectronics system is designed to perform optogenetics experiments in LUMC. Finally, aiming at the ultimate goal-implantable, self-powered driver feasibility research is performed to prove it is feasible to design a self-power optoelectronics driver system in the future.

Keywords: smart driver, biomedical electronics, high power LED driver, matrix control, system integration


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Danai Galiti


Ph.D. Thesis Defense of Sining Pan

Resistor-based temperature sensors in CMOS technology

Sining Pan

Time: Monday, 12 April 2021, 12:00-12:15 (layman’s talk), 12:30-13:30 (defense)

Abstract: This thesis describes the principle and design of an emerging type of CMOS temperature sensors based on the temperature dependency of on-chip resistors. Compared to traditional BJT-based designs, resistor-based sensors have higher energy-efficiency, better scalability, and can operate under a wider supply range. Nine design examples are shown in this thesis to demonstrate how resistor-based sensors can be optimized for accuracy, energy-efficiency, or other application-driven specifications. Among all the records the designs achieved, the energy-efficiency improvement is the most impressive: 65× better than state-of-the-art before this research, or only 6× away from the theoretical value.

Please feel welcome to join the live stream: http://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/play/be505395bbf24debb7cf8fd61454a5261d

Thesis: https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:28108302-2d9b-4560-a806-8ba6d381812e

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design, Integration and Characterization of Microelectrodes for Heart-On-Chip Applications

Shriya Rangaswamy


ME colloquium

MEMS-flavored organs-on-chip

Massimo Mastrangeli

The current drug development process selects candidate drugs for human testing through several pre-clinical stages making use of only approximate models of human physiology. Such models include static engineered cell cultures and non-human animals, and do not recapitulate the (patho)physiology of human organs or tissues well enough to always ensure reliable translation of results to humans. This makes the process increasingly expensive and time-consuming. A novel technology stemming from the convergence of tissue engineering and microfluidics may hold the key to bridge the translational gap, and even allow personalized drug testing. Such technology, able to reproduce realistic in vivo-like dynamic and stimulative microenvironments for tissues in vitro, goes under the name of "organs-on-chip".

In this talk I will introduce the biotechnological convergence at the root of organs-on-chip before outlining research tracks under development at ECTM in two main sub-topics: innovative microelectromechanical organs-on-chip able to stimulate and sense tissue activity, and their embedding within advanced platforms for pre-clinical research. I will conclude with remarks on the role of open technology platforms for the broader establishment and acceptance of organs-on-chip technology in research and drug development.

If you want to join, please send an email to: secr-me-ewi@tudelft.nl

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Medical Delta Café

Medical Delta Café 'Zorg naar huis, en dan….? Van monitoren tot behandelen'

Wouter Serdijn, Frank Willem Jansen (Medical Delta), Gisela Terwindt (LUMC), Ries Biggelaar van den (ErasmusMC)

In het online Medical Delta Café 'Zorg naar huis, en dan….? Van monitoren tot behandelen' belichten prof. dr. Gisela Terwindt (LUMC) en drs. Ries van den Biggelaar (Erasmus MC) deze kwesties, waarna deelnemers worden uitgenodigd mee te discussiëren en kennis uit te wisselen in een paneldiscussie met onder andere Medical Delta hoogleraar prof. dr. ir. Wouter Serdijn (TU Delft).

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PhD Thesis Defence

Integrated Circuits for Miniature 3-D Ultrasound Probes: Solutions for the Interconnection Bottleneck

Zhao Chen

14:30-15:00 (layman’s talk), 15:00-16:00 (defence)

Please feel welcome to join the live stream

Promotors: Michiel Pertijs and Nico de Jong

Abstract: This thesis describes low-power application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs to mitigate the constraint of cable count in miniature 3-D TEE probes. Receive cable-count reduction techniques including subarray beamforming and digital time-division multiplexing (TDM) have been explored and the effectiveness of these techniques has been demonstrated by experimental prototypes. Digital TDM is a reliable technique to reduce cable count, but it requires an in-probe datalink for high-speed data communication. A quantitative study on the impact of the datalink performance on B-mode ultrasound image quality has been introduced in this thesis for data communication in future digitized ultrasound probes. Finally, a high-voltage transmitter prototype has been presented for effective cable-count reduction in transmission while achieving good power efficiency. The application of these techniques is not limited to only the design of TEE probes and can be easily extended to the design of other miniature 3-D ultrasound probes, for instance intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) probes and IVUS probes, which are facing similar interconnect challenges with an increased number of transducer elements to enhance imaging quality.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Cardiac mapping on ex vivo perfused porcine slaughterhouse hearts

Jorik Hans Amesz


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Polyimide encapsulation for implantable medical devices

Sevda Malek Kani

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Ultrasound Energy Transfer using Charged CMUTs

Youri Westhoek

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Towards cMUT for Neurostimulation

Eric Bert Dijkema

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ME Colloquium

Past, Present and Future of micro/nano Electronics Reliability


The scientific successes of many micro/nano-related technology developments cannot lead to business success without innovation and breakthroughs in the way that we address reliability through the whole value chain. The ultimate aim of reliability is to predict, optimize and design upfront the reliability of micro/nanoelectronics and systems, an area denoted as ‘Design for Reliability (DfR)’. While virtual schemes based on numerical simulation are widely used for functional design, they lack a systematic approach when used for reliability assessments. Besides this, lifetime predictions are still based on old standards (MIL, FIDES, Telcordia, etc.) assuming a constant failure rate behavior. Here, the so-called digital twin comes into sight, which is no more than just a mathematical model of a physical object. In this talk, I will present the history of reliability as we know it and what future directions are foreseen.

If you would like to join the colloquium, send an email to secr-me-ewi@tudelft.nl and you will receive the link.

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Artificial Retina: A Future Cellular-Resolution Brain-Machine Interface

Dante Muratore

A healthy retina transduces incoming visual stimuli into patterns of neural activity, which are then transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve. Degenerative diseases, like macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa, destroy the ability of the retina to transduce light, causing profound blindness. An artificial retina is a device that replaces the function of retinal circuitry lost to disease. Present-day devices can elicit visual percepts in patients, providing a proof of concept. However, the patterns of neural activity they produce are far from natural, and the visual sensations experienced by patients are coarse and of limited use to patients.

A main hurdle is that there are many types of cells in the retina. For example, some cells respond to increases of light intensity, while other cells respond to decreases of light intensity. In order to reproduce a meaningful neural code, it is crucial to respect the specificity and selectivity of these cells. Because cells of different types are intermixed in the circuitry of the retina, cell type specific activation of this kind requires that a future artificial retina be able to stimulate at single cell resolution, over a significant area in the central retina.

To achieve this goal, we are designing an epi-retinal interface that operates in two modes: calibration and runtime. During calibration, the interface learns which cells and which cell types are available for stimulation, by recording neural activity from the retina. During runtime, the interface stimulates the available cells to best approximate the desired scene. I will present a system architecture we are developing that can accomplish the overall performance goals, and the implications of this architecture for brain-machine interfaces.

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PhD Thesis Defence

MEMS Solutions For More Than Illumination

Xueming Li

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PhD Thesis Defence

From Silicon Toward Silicon Carbide Smart Integrated Sensors

Luke Middelburg

Abstract
This PhD thesis focusses on the possibilities and challenges of the pathway from silicon toward silicon carbide smart integrated sensors. The research toward extended functionality of sensors in state-of-the-art silicon technology and the exploration of the application of wide-bandgap semiconductors can both be seen as realization of the More-than-Moore trend, described by diversification, the introduction of novel materials and integrated process development.
In this context, different types of sensors are developed, such a high-resolution gravimeter in silicon technology and different poly-SiC-based sensors such as a platform for an optical PM sensor and different pressure sensing structures. Additionally, a SiC CMOS chip is developed in collaboration with Fraunhofer IISB consisting of discrete electronic devices, resistive and capacitive read-out circuits and temperature sensors.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design and Fabrication of Electrical Stimulation Setup for EHT platform

Androniki Diakou

The public presentation will be streamed online at this link.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design, fabrication and characterisation of graphene nano-ribbons for Boolean gates logic

Teodor Nikolov

The public defence will be accessible via https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/97925809896?pwd=bWtSYUM0R29kTW1JY3dqUjhkOXpGQT09


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design and development of integrated displacement sensors for engineered heart tissue platforms

Mahdieh Shojaei Baghini

Under the current circumstances, the public defence will be held online. You can tune in at the following link:
https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/91898588409?pwd=NmFydjVHZUxIV2lVZXBTTzZHOTFodz09
Meeting ID: 918 9858 8409 Password: 1P0dZu


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Experimental study on electromigration by using Blech structure

Yaqian Zhang

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SSCS WYE Webinar

To Academia, or to Industry, That is the Question.

Kofi Makinwa, Shin-Lien Lu

Abstract:

You are about to finish graduate school or perhaps a young or seasoned professional, contemplating a career transition. Which is better - a career in academia or industry? What are the pros and cons of one versus the other? How can you start exploring and build up your career accordingly? In this webinar, we will interview Dr. Linus Lu, a professor-turned-industry veteran, and Prof. Kofi Makinwa, an industry veteran-turned-professor, who will share their insights and perspectives from their personal journeys in both academia and industry careers. They will also address what triggered their transitions, how they staged their transitions, and offer their crystal ball projections on present and future career prospects in the solid-state-circuits profession.

REGISTER TODAY!

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MSc thesis Defence

Design of a valveless organ-on-chip micropump

Suzanne Onderdelinden


PhD Thesis Defence

Design, Fabrication and Characterizations of AlGan/Gan Heterostructure Sensors

Jianwen Sun

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PhD Thesis Defence

Fan-Out SiC MOSFET Power Module in the Organic Substrate

Fengze Hou

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PhD Thesis Defence

Through Package Via. A Bottom-up Approach

Hengqian (Daniel) Yi

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PhD Thesis Defence

Metal sulfides for gas sensing applications: devices and mechanisms

Hongyu Tang

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A 3D microelectrode array to record neural activity at different tissue depths

Tim de Rijk


PhD Thesis Defence

Low temperature sintering of Cu nanoparticle paste: Mechanism and applications

Boyao Zhang

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Flexible Graphene-Based Passive and Active Spinal Cord Implants

Andrada Velea

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PhD Thesis Defence

AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) based sensors for gas sensing applications

Robert Sokolovskij

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Transferred Graphene as a Conductive Layer on a Thin Alumina Membrane

Thijs ten Bruggencate


PhD Thesis Defence

Ultra-thin MEMS tynodes for electron multiplication

Violeta Prodanovic

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PhD Thesis Defence

High-Speed Interfaces for Capacitive Displacement Sensor

Sha Xia

This thesis describes the theory, design, and implementation of high-speed capacitive displacement sensor interface circuits. The intended application is to readout the capacitive displacement sensor used in a servo loop, where the measurement time needs to be low to ensure loop stability. The work employs baseline-capacitance cancellation technique to reach a high energy-efficiency and high conversion speed.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A Dynamic Zoom ADC for Audio Applications

Efraïm Eland

Audio ADCs used in high-fidelity portable audio and IoT are not only required to have high linearity and dynamic range (DR) but are also expected to be very energy efficient and occupy minimum silicon area. Zoom-ADCs combine a coarse asynchronous SAR with a fine Delta-Sigma Modulator (∆ΣM) to satisfy these requirements. Existing zoom ADC architectures are limited in terms of SQNR due to the need for the fine ADC to have some over-ranging. That, together with the leakage of the SAR ADC’s quantization noise, “fuzz,” into the audio band, puts a lower limit on the sampling frequency.
This thesis describes the design of a zoom-ADC for an audio bandwidth of 20kHz. Using a 4-level quantizer, instead of a conventional 1b quantizer, mitigates the adverse effects of over-ranging, making it possible to keep a very low sampling frequency. On top of that, it makes use of a simple, low power analog “fuzz” cancellation scheme to prevent the SAR quantization noise from leaking into the audio band.
The chip has been prototyped in a standard 160nm CMOS technology and consumes 339μW with 107.7dB DR and 105dB SNDR. Compared to state-of-the-art ADCs with a similar bandwidth, this work achieves a 2x lower OSR (fs = 2.5MHz), significantly improving the energy efficiency and achieving a Schreier FoM of 185.4dB.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Rail-to-rail input and output amplifier for ADC front-end applications.

Shubham Khandelwal

This work presents a unity-gain stable operational amplifier for an ADC front-end application. The op-amp focuses on delivering high linearity with low noise and offset while driving a switched capacitor load. To accomplish this the op-amp employs Current Spillover, Chopping and Gain-Boosting techniques. The op-amp achieves THD of -108 dB at 10kHz, offset of 2.7 µV and input noise density of 19.3 nV/√Hz while consuming 504 µW; resulting in an NEF of 12.28. The op-amp is fabricated in 0.16 µm CMOS technology and occupies 0.1 mm2 area.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Mauricio Rosencwaig


Micro electronics colloquium

“New Results on Electromigration Modeling – A Departure from Blech’s Theory”/“Progress of Prognostics and Health Management for autonomous driving “

Xuejun Fan, Alexandru Prisacaru

Xuejun Fan is a Regents’ Professor of Texas State University System, and a Mary Ann and Lawrence E. Faust Endowed Professor at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. He is currently on his sabbatical leave and is a visiting professor with in the Laboratory of Electronic Components, Technology and Materials of the Delft University of Technology. Dr. Fan is an IEEE Fellow, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. He serves as a member-at-large of the IEEE Electronic Packaging Society (EPS) Board of Governors. Dr. Fan gained significant experience in the microelectronics industry between 1997 and 2007, at IME, Philips and Intel. His current areas of expertise include characterization, modeling and reliability of materials, components, and systems in micro- and opto-electronics manufacturing and packaging. Dr. Fan received the Outstanding Sustained Technical Contribution Award in 2017, and Exceptional Technical Achievement Award in 2011, from the IEEE Electronic Packaging Society. In his early academia career in China, Dr. Fan was the recipient of a Young Faculty Award from the Fok Ying-Tung Education Foundation in 1994, and the nominee for the title of “Ten Outstanding Youth of China” in 1991. He was one of the youngest full professors in China at the age of 27 at Taiyuan University of Technology in 1991.

Abstract: “New Results on Electromigration Modeling – A Departure from Blech’s Theory” We have recently developed a multi-physics-based general coupling theory for electromigration (J. Appl. Phys. 125, 105101, 2019). The results show the mechanical stress is significantly less than the existing literature solutions. In addition, the vacancy concentration gradient plays an important role in formulating electromigration problems. We revisited Blech’s theory and a new threshold criterion for electromigration failure has been developed. This is a major departure from the Blech’s theory, and the preliminary results show the predicted results are consistent with the Blech’s original test data.

Alexandru Prisacaru is currently working in Bosch, Automotive Electronics in Reutlingen. He is also a parttime PhD candidate in cooperation with ECTM. His research activities focus on developing and implementing Prognostics and Health Management methodologies of safety relevant electronics for future automated driving applications. Amongst these, his technical expertise include computational structural mechanics, material modeling, statistical pattern recognition, IoT and machine learning methods. He holds a Master degree in Computational Engineering from Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany and a Master degree in Structural Engineering from Technical University "Gheorghe Asachi" from Iasi, Romania.’

Abstract: “Progress of Prognostics and Health Management for autonomous driving “ Recent trends in automotive electronics such as, automated driving, electromobility, connectivity, personalization and artificial intelligence will increase the number and complexity of electronics used in safety relevant applications. This will lead into a new type of electronics reliability requirements. A more dynamic, on demand way of assuring the functional safety and system availability is expected. The research output is providing the hardware, methodology, strategies and the engineering guidelines for the thermo-mechanical stress prognostic based sensor data in order to highlight the necessary information and knowledge for fault detection and prediction.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A PLL-based eddy current displacement sensor for button applications

Matheus Ferreira Pimenta

This thesis presents an eddy current sensor (ECS) for button readout applications. The interface embeds the coil sensor in a digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) and uses a highly digital phase locked loop (PLL) to convert the displacement information into a digital output.
The sensor achieves more than 12bit effective resolution, which translates into an equivalent displacement resolution in excess of 10nm RMS. The interface consumes less than 235µA from a 1.8V supply, resulting in a very power efficient architecture.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design and Fabrication of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators for Organ-on-Chip Platforms

Chuqian Zhang


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

MEMS ultrasound for active implantable devices

Marta Saccher


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A Complete Overview on Realizing Transfer-free Graphene-based Differential Pressure Sensor

Raghutham Ramesha


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

An ASIC with Bipolar High-Voltage Transmit Switching for a Single-Cable Intra-Vascular Ultrasound Probe

Rishabh Nagarkar

An ASIC is presented for intra-vascular ultrasound imaging. Despite being connected via a single coaxial cable, it is able to pass arbitrary high-voltage bipolar signals to the transducers for acoustic imaging. The thesis talks about the need to reduce the cable count to one and reviews the existing work in literature. It builds upon an existing single-cable design and focuses on the transmit part to make it compatible with a large number of ultrasound imaging modes by allowing it to pass high-frequency signals up to 20MHz and bipolar signal voltages up to +/-25V. The chip is phantom powered and thus its power supply and signals are transmitted on the same cable. The transmit switch designed for this ASIC is powered by and controlled by an on-chip low-voltage supply and circuitry. The prototype ASIC has been designed in TSMC 180nm HV BCD Gen2 technology. This single-cable design has 16 elements for transmit and 64 elements in the receive mode and has been evaluated using simulations.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

A low-noise amplifier for ultrasound imaging with continuous time-gain compensation

Qiyou Jiang

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for ultrasound imaging with built-in continuous time-gain compensation (TGC), which compensates for the time-dependent attenuation of the received echo signal and thus significantly reduces its dynamic range (DR).

The proposed design combines the LNA and TGC functions in a single variable-gain current-to-current amplifier. Compared to conventional ultrasound front-ends, which implement the TGC function after an LNA that needs to handle the full DR of the echo signal, this approach can highly reduce the power consumption and the size. Compared to earlier programmable gain LNAs with discrete gain steps, the continuous gain control avoids switching transients that may lead to imaging artefacts.

The TGC function is realized by a novel feedback network consisting of a double differential pair that feeds a fraction of the output current back to the input. This fraction can be changed continuously using a control voltage that is applied to the gates of the differential pairs, to realize a gain range from -20 dB to +20 dB. To achieve an approximately constant closed-loop bandwidth in the presence of the changing feedback factor, a loop amplifier has been implemented whose gain is changed along with the feedback factor by dynamically changing its bias currents. This loop amplifier employs a current-reuse architecture to achieve high power-efficiency. In addition, a variable bias current source has been designed to appropriately bias the TGC feedback network. By employing a similar double differential pair topology as in the feedback network, this current source provides the required low noise at the highest gain setting and high current at the lowest gain setting within the available headroom.

The LNA with built-in TGC function has been realized in 180nm CMOS technology. It has been optimized to interface with a 7.5 MHz capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT). Simulation results show that it achieves a 3dB bandwidth higher than 40 MHz across the full gain range. At the highest gain setting, its input current noise is 0.96 pA/rt-Hz at 7.5 MHz. This leads to an input dynamic range of 93 dB, which is compressed into an output dynamic range of 53 dB by means of the 40 dB variable gain. The amplifier consumes 10.8 mW from a 1.8V supply, and occupies an estimated 320 x 320 um2 die area.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

High density integrated capacitors for smart catheters and implants

Jeroen Naaborg


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Noninvasive Hemodynamic Monitoring: Left Ventricular Pressure-Volume Loop Reconstruction

Aoibhinn Larkin Reddington


PhD Thesis Defence

Nikolas Gaio

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PhD Thesis Defence

William Quiros Solano

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PRORISC and SAFE 2019

PRORISC and SAFE 2019

PRORISC is an annual conference on Integrated Circuit (IC) design and SAFE is an annual conference on Microsystems, Materials, Technology and RF-devices. Both conferences are organized together within the three technical Dutch universities Twente, Delft and Eindhoven. The conference is organized by PhD students and is intended for PhD candidates to expand their network and share their research ideas, which provides a unique opportunity for future collaborations. Each year, one of the technical universities will be responsible for the organization of the two conferences. In 2019 the PRORISC will be held at at the campus of Delft University of Technology.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Investigation of pressure assisted nanosilver sintering process for application in power electronics

Hao Zhang

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Quantum Computer on a Chip

Bogdan Staszewski
University College Dublin

Quantum computing is a new paradigm that exploits fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement, to tackle problems in mathematics, chemistry and material science that are well beyond the reach of supercomputers. Despite the intensive worldwide race to build a useful quantum computer, it is projected to take decades before reaching the state of useful quantum supremacy. The main challenge is that qubits operate at the atomic level, thus are extremely fragile, and difficult to control and read out. The current state-of-art implements a few dozen magnetic-spin based qubits in a highly specialized technology and cools them down to a few tens of millikelvin. The high cost of cryogenic cooling prevents its widespread use. A companion classical electronic controller, needed to control and read out the qubits, is mostly realized with room-temperature laboratory instrumentation. This makes it bulky and nearly impossible to scale up to the thousands or millions of qubits needed for practical quantum algorithms.

As part of our startup company, we propose a new quantum computer paradigm that exploits the wonderful scaling achievements of mainstream integrated circuits (IC) technology which underpins personal computers and mobile phones. Just like with a small IC chip, where a single nanometer-sized CMOS transistor can be reliably replicated millions of times to build a digital processor, we propose a new structure of a qubit realized as a CMOS-compatible charge-based quantum dot that can be reliably replicated thousands of times to construct a quantum processor. Combined with an on-chip CMOS controller, it will realize a useful quantum computer which can operate at a much higher temperature of 4 kelvin.

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Inauguration Earl McCune and Cicero Vaucher

Who's talking, who's listening?

Earl McCune, Cicero Vaucher
TU Delft

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Micro electronics colloquium

High performance data converters; Rethink analog IC design

Nan Sun, Muhammed Bolatkale

Nan Sun: Rethink Analog IC Design

I will present several unconventional data conversion architectures. First, I will talk about how we can make use of noise, which is usually deemed as an undesirable thing, to estimate the conversion residue and increase the SNR of a SAR ADC. It is an interesting example of stochastic resonance, in which the presence of noise can lead to not SNR degradation but SNR enhancement. Second, I will talk about how we can perform data conversion below the Nyquist rate by exploiting the sparsity of the input signal. I will show two example compressive sensing ADCs and how the effective ADC conversion rate can be reduced by 4 times but without losing information. Third, I will show how we can prevent the seemingly inevitable kT/C noise in a Nyquist-rate pipelined ADC by using a continuous-time SAR based 1st-stage. This can substantially reduce the requirement on the ADC input capacitance, greatly reducing the ADC driver power and reference buffer power

Biography of Nan Sun

Nan Sun is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He received the B.S. from Tsinghua in 2006 and Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 2010. Dr. Sun received the NSF Career Award in 2013. He serves on the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference and the IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuit Conference. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – I: Regular Papers, and a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. He also serves as IEEE Circuits-and-Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer from 2019 to 2020.

Muhammed Bolatkale: High Performance Data Converters

A next generation automotive radio receiver, an all-digital Class-D amplifier, and an advanced Bluetooth transceiver have one thing in common: they rely on high-performance data converter architectures to enable best in class performance. This talk will give an overview of GHz-sampling data converters, especially focusing on wideband delta-sigma and hybrid data converter architectures. We will touch upon state-of-the-art systems and circuit level designs fabricated in advance CMOS nodes.

Bio Muhammed Bolatkale

Muhammed Bolatkale is Senior Principle Scientist at NXP Semiconductors and part-time Associate Professor in the Electronics Instrumentation Laboratory at Delft University of Technology. He received his B. Sc. (high honors) degree from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2004 and the M. Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, in 2007 and 2013. Since 2007, Dr. Bolatkale has worked for NXP Semiconductors, specializing in wideband Delta-Sigma ADCs for wireless communications and automotive applications. Dr. Bolatkale received the ISSCC 2016 and 2011 Jan Van Vessem Award for Outstanding European Paper and the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 2016 and 2011 Best Paper Award.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Bart Kootte


Microelectronics Colloquium

Introducing new CAS professors

Andrew Webb, Borbála Hunyadi

Andrew Webb:

MRI is one of the most important clinical imaging modalities for diagnosis and treatment monitoring. Recent trends have been towards ever higher magnetic fields and operating frequencies. This talk outlines some of the technical challenges faced by very high field and conversely very low field MRI, and the roles that electromagnetics and signal processing can play in improving image quality

Borbala Hunyadi

Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) record a mixture of ongoing neural processes, physiological and non-physiological noise. The pattern of interest is often hidden within this noisy mixture. This talk gives an overview of signal processing and machine learning techniques to address this issue by capturing the spatiotemporal structure in the (multimodal) data. Special attention is given to tensor-based blind source separation techniques, with applications in epilepsy research.


Radio-frequency engineering for space

Václav Valenta
European Space Agency

The key challenges in the design of radio-frequency instruments for space will be reviewed. Space environmental aspects will be discussed as well as the practical measures that need to be implemented to assure a high level of reliability. Selected examples will be presented, covering a wide spectrum of applications: from new satellite communication trends, such as active reconfigurable antennas to future scientific RF instruments that will be placed on other planets. Special focus will be put on high-power amplification concepts and integration solutions.

Speaker Bio: Václav Valenta was born in Czechoslovakia and received Master and Doctoral degrees in radio engineering and mathematics from the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic and Université Paris-Est in France, respectively. In the past, Dr. Valenta has designed and demonstrated active and passive radar systems operating up to a frequency of 140 GHz. His expertise is in the area of multi-functional RFIC design (SiGe BiCMOS and III-V) covering key functions from amplification, frequency generation/conversion, modulation/demodulation, and heterogenous RFIC integration. Dr. Valenta is currently with the European Space Agency, RF Equipment and Technology Section, running and supporting several R&D projects. Dr. Valenta is responsible for the development of the radio-science instrument "LaRa", which is a scientific payload that will be launched to Mars in the frame of the mission ExoMars 2020.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

MEMS Switches Fabricated by Carbon Nanotubes with Silicon Carbide Coating

Ziqiao Huang


PhD Thesis Defence

Pan Liu


PhD Thesis Defence

Aleksandar Jovic

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PhD Thesis Defence

Surface Acoustic Mode Aluminium Nitride Transducer for micro-size liquid sensing applications

Thu Hang Bui

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PhD Thesis Defence

Free standing interconnects for stretchable electronics

Shivani Joshi

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Fabrication and reliability study of parylene-ceramic based flexible interconnects for implantable devices

Diane Wu


Microelectronics Colloquium

Material Engineering for Stability Improvement of Perovskite Solar Cells

C.P. Wong
Georgia Tech

Organolead halide perovskites have recently emerged as a fascinating light harvesting material that combines the advantages of simple fabrication process and excellent electronic properties. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has been rapidly improved from 3.8% to 23.3% within the past several years. In contrast to the stunning rise in efficiency, the instability of the PSCs is its Achilles’ heel. The instability issue of the whole device originates not only from the perovskite layer itself, but also from the use of doped organic charge transport materials, such as spiro-MeOTAD. This talk is to provide material strategies to improve the stability of the organolead halide perovskite materials as well as other functional layers in PSCs. To improve the air-stability of perovskite films prepared from two-step sequential deposition by simultaneously eliminating PbI2 residue and improving the crystallinity of the perovskite films. We developed PbI2 thin films with nano-pores and tunable crystal sizes, which enabled full conversion of PbI2 to MAPbI3. A large perovskite crystalline domains, and that the impurity-free, lead to reduced trap states and improved air-stability of the perovskite thin films. The second part of my talk is devoted to improve the stability of the entire PSC device by developing a solution-processed NiOx hole-transport layer, as the hygroscopic nature of the NiOx film suppresses the diffusion of water molecules to the perovskite, and it is also insusceptible to heat. As a result, the PSCs with a structure of FTO / TiO2 / Perovskite / NiOx / Au demonstrated remarkable air-stability and thermal stability. By further modifying of the NiOx / metal interface by CuSCN, we further realized high-efficiency PSCs with excellent air stability, exhibiting nearly no efficiency degradation after exposed to air for 4 months. Furthermore, the ion migration-induced instability issue through incorporating extrinsic alkali cations (i.e., Rb+, K+, Na+, or Li+) into the perovskite. The size-dependent interstitial occupancy of the extrinsic alkali cations in the perovskite lattice was proposed and verified for the first time through density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Such interstitial doping method suppressed I- ion migration in the bulk of perovskites, thus resulting in reduced I-V hysteresis of the PSCs, weakened poling effects and improved photo stability of wide-bandgap mixed-halide perovskites.


Microelectronics Colloquium

Tenure track colloquium

Sten Vollebregt, Massimo Mastrangeli, Daniele Cavallo

Wideband phased arrays for future wireless communication terminals, Daniele Cavallo (TS group)

Wireless data traffic will grow exponentially in the next years, due to the proliferation of user terminals and bandwidth-greedy applications. To address this demand, the next generations of mobile communication (5G and beyond) will have to shift the operation to higher frequencies, especially to millimetre-wave (mmWave) spectrum (30-300 GHz), that can provide extremely high-speed data links. To enable mm-wave wireless communication, mobile terminals such as smartphones will need phased arrays antennas, able to radiate or receive greater power in specific directions that can be dynamically steered electronically. However, to cover the different 5G mm-wave bands simultaneously (28, 39, 60 GHz, …) and to achieve total angular coverage, too many of such antennas should be on the same device: the main bottleneck is the insufficient space available to place all antenna modules. Therefore, I propose to investigate novel phased array antenna solutions with very large angular coverage and ultra-wide frequency bandwidth, to massively reduce the overall space occupation of handset antennas and overcome the current limitations of mobile terminal antenna development.

Towards smart organs-on-chip, Massimo Mastrangeli (ECTM Group)

Organs-on-chip are microfluidic systems that enable dynamic tissue co-cultures under physiologically realistic conditions. OOCs are helping innovating the drug screening process and gaining new fundamental insights in human physiology. In this talk, after a summary of my past research journey, I will describe how the ECTM group at TU Delft is envisioning the use microfabrication and materials science to embed real-time sensing and actuation in innovative and scalable OOC platforms.

Emerging electronic materials: from lab to fab, Sten Vollebregt (ECTM group)

Due to their nm-size features and often unique physical properties nanomaterials, like nanotubes and 2D materials, can potentially outperform classical materials or even provide functionality which cannot be obtained otherwise. Because of this, these nanomaterials hold many promises for the next generation of devices for sensing & communication and health & wellbeing.

Unfortunately, many promising applications of nanomaterials never reach sufficient maturity to be implemented in actual products. This is mostly because the interest in the academic community reduces once the initial properties have been demonstrated, while the risk for industrialization is still too high for most companies to start their own R&D activities. My goal is to bridge these two worlds by investigating the integration of novel nanomaterials in semiconductor technology and demonstrating the scalability of novel sensing devices. In this talk, I will give examples on how carbon nanotubes, graphene and other emerging nanomaterials can be used in the next generation of sensing devices.


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Integration of a local drug delivery system in a micro-fabricated Brain-on-Chip device

Hanieh Mastyani


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Flexible parylene-platinum based electrodes and interconnects

Arshaad Ishrat Kanhai


Conferences

PRORISC 2018 Conference

Annual conference on Integrated Circuit (IC) design, organized within the three technical Dutch universities Twente, Delft and Eindhoven

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Conferences

SAFE 2018 Conference

Annual conference on Micro-systems, Materials, Technology and RF-devices, organized within the three technical Dutch universities of Twente, Delft and Eindhoven.

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Electronic Instrumentation Colloquium

Reducing Switching Artifacts in Chopper Amplifiers

Yoshinori Kusuda

Abstract

Chopping is a technique with which amplifier offset can be reduced to sub-μV levels, at the expense of reduced signal bandwidth due to chopping artifacts such as up-modulated ripple and glitches. In this talk, some circuit techniques to reduce such artifacts are proposed.These circuit techniques have been used in three commercially-available operational amplifiers, whose design and measured performance will be discussed. Lastly, some of the challenges associated in testing low-offset amplifiers in mass-production will be discussed..

Biography

Yoshinori Kusuda received the B.S. degree in electrical and electronic engineering in 2002, and M.S. degree in PhysicalElectronics in 2004, both from Tokyo Institute of Technology. Upon his graduation in 2004, he joined the Japan DesignCenter of Analog Devices (ADI) as an IC design engineer. He is currently based in San Jose, CA, U.S.A., working for the Linear and Precision Technology Group of ADI. The focus of his work is on precision CMOS analog designs, including stand-alone amplifiers and application specific mixed-signal products. This has resulted in presentations and papers at IEEE conferences and journals, as well as nine issued U.S. patents. Since August2015, he has been a guest researcher at the ElectronicInstrumentation Laboratory of the TU Delft.


Active Implantable Biomedical Microsystems Course

Active Implantable Biomedical Microsystems Course

Vasiliki Giagka, Virgilio Valente, Christos Strydis, Wouter Serdijn
Delft University of Technology and Erasmus Medical Center

Course on the understanding, design and future developments of active implantable biomedical microsystems, such as cochlear implants, cardiac pacemakers, spinal cord implants, neurostimulators and bioelectronic medicine.

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Levar Goossens


Smart Sensor Systems 2018

Smart Sensor Systems 2018

This course addresses the design and development of smart sensor systems. After a general overview, various key aspects of sensor systems are discussed: measurement and calibration techniques, the design of precision sensor interfaces, analog-to-digital conversion techniques, and sensing principles for the measurement of magnetic fields, temperature, capacitance, acceleration and rotation. The state-of-the-art smart sensor systems covered by the course include smart magnetic-field sensors, smart temperature sensors, physical chemosensors, multi-electrode capacitive sensors, implantable smart sensors, DNA microarrays, smart inertial sensors, smart optical microsystems and CMOS image sensors. A systematic approach towards the design of smart sensor systems is presented. The lectures are augmented by case studies and hands-on demonstrations.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Front-End ASICs for 3-D Ultrasound: From Beamforming to Digitization

Chao Chen

Program:
12:00 - 12:15 Introductory presentation
12:30 - 13:30 Public defense
13:45 - 14:00 Diploma ceremony
Address: Senaatszaal of the Aula Congress Center

SUMMARY
This thesis describes the analysis, design and evaluation of front-end application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for 3-D medical ultrasound imaging, with the focus on the receive electronics. They are specifically designed for next-generation miniature 3-D ultrasound devices, such as transesophageal echocardiography (TEE), intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) probes. These probes, equipped with 2-D array transducers and thus the capability of volumetric visualization, are crucial for both accurate diagnosis and therapy guidance of cardiovascular diseases. However, their stringent size constraints, as well as the limited power budget, increase the difficulty in integrating in-probe electronics. The mismatch between the increasing number of transducer elements and the limited cable count that can be accommodated, also makes it challenging to acquire data from these probes. Front-end ASICs that are optimized in both system architecture and circuit-level implementation are proposed in this thesis to tackle these problems.
The techniques described in this thesis have been applied in several prototype realizations, including one LNA test chip, one PVDF readout IC, two analog beamforming ASICs and one ASIC with on-chip digitization and datalinks. All prototypes have been evaluated both electrically and acoustically. The LNA test chip achieved a noise-efficiency factor (NEF) that is 2.5 × better than the state-of-the-art. One of the analog beamforming ASIC achieved a 0.27 mW/element power efficiency with a compact layout matched to a 150 µm element pitch. This is the highest power-efficiency and smallest pitch to date, in comparison with state-of-the-art ultrasound front-end ASICs. The ASIC with integrated beamforming ADC consumed only 0.91 mW/element within the same element area. A comparison with previous digitization solutions for 3-D ultrasound shows that this work achieved a 10 × improvement in power-efficiency, as well as a 3.3 × improvement in integration density.

The dissertation can be found in the TU Delft repository: http://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:a5002bb0-4701-4e33-aef6-3c78d0c9fd70

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Optimization of LPCVD-SiNx Membranes for Micro-hotplate/Nano-reactors

Sarat Shankar Sinha

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Design and Integration of Graphene Sensors With Read-Out Electronics: A Graphene-Based Pirani Pressure Sensor Integrated with the BICMOS Process

Joost Romijn


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Fabrication and Characterization of PEDOT coated microelectrode array for Organ on Chip Application

Affan Kaysa Waafi


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Electrostatically activated graphene resonators

Manvika Singh


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Fabrication and characterization of High aspect ratio MEMS Electrochemical Sensor

Dong Bin Cai

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Effects of silicon oxides as substrates for graphene gas sensor

Shengtai Shi


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Silicon based microfluidic device for smart assessment of cellular stiffness

Shinnosuke Kawasaki

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Investigation on Viscoplastic Properties of Au-Sn Die-attach Solder

Tianyi Jin


Bioelectronics Colloquium

On the Relationship between Nyquist Rate and Healthcare: Silicon Systems to Close the Sub-Sampling Gap in Health Screening and Monitoring

Amin Arbabian, PhD (Stanford University)

Abstract
Advances in healthcare technologies have mainly focused on therapeutics, interventional procedures, and “late-stage” diagnostics. These steps have undergone significant improvements, leading to higher survival rates and enhancements in quality of life. Nevertheless, current trends are unsustainable due to the inadequate outcomes on specific critical diseases and skyrocketing national healthcare costs. An important example is cancer, where mortality rates have not seen major improvements, even with the tremendous technological advances in diagnostic imaging tools over the last four decades.

In this talk I will outline our efforts in better marrying technology and healthcare with new systems that 1) enable continuous “Nyquist” imaging and screening to enable preventive/predictive care, and 2) introduce smart implants for precision monitoring and closed-loop therapies. Preventive screening through continuous monitoring has the potential to fundamentally revamp our understanding of disease as well as targeted therapy. Today, the human body is monitored infrequently, perhaps on an annual basis and with a low “resolution”. This is in contrast with advanced electronic systems (many of which our community designs and ships), which are frequently monitored and calibrated. I will summarize a few example projects that aim to address these issues, including portable, semiconductor-based, “Tricorder” imaging systems, ultrasound-powered implantable devices that can measure, detect, and act upon local physiological changes through closed-loop neuromodulation or “electroceuticals”, and finally our new investigation of a noninvasive methods of neuromodulation based on ultrasonic excitation.

Biography
Amin Arbabian received his Ph.D. degree in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2011 and in 2012 joined Stanford University, as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research interests are in mm-wave and high-frequency circuits and systems, imaging technologies, and ultra-low power sensors and implantable devices. Prof. Arbabian currently serves on the steering committee of RFIC, the technical program committees of RFIC and ESSCIRC, and as associate editor of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSC-L) and the IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (J-ERM). He is the recipient or co-recipient of the 2016 Stanford University Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2015 NSF CAREER award, 2014 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) including the Director’s Fellowship in 2016, 2013 Hellman faculty scholarship, and best paper awards from several conferences including ISSCC (2010), VLSI Circuits (2014), RFIC symposium (2008 and 2011), ICUWB (2013), PIERS (2015), and the MTT-S BioWireless symposium (2016).

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PhD Thesis Defence

Solid State Lighting Color Shift

Guangjun Lu

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PhD Thesis Defence

The Lifetime Prediction of LED Drivers and Lamps

Bo Sun

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

High Density Flexible Interconnect for Minimally Invasive Medical Instruments

Michel van der Kaay


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Nano-copper paste filled vertical interconnects

Maryam Namin


PhD Thesis Defence

Cinzia Silvestri

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Conferences

Eurosensors dead-line


Professoren in de Arena

Professoren in de Arena: De bionische mens, van protheses naar upgrades

Wouter Serdijn, Just Herder, Harrie Weinans, Project March

Op 28 maart gaan drie hoogleraren, waaronder Wouter Serdijn, met elkaar in debat over 'de bionische mens'. Wat is er mogelijk en hoe ver kun, wil en mag je gaan? In drie korte minicolleges praten de heren u bij en worden ze vervolgens stevig aan de tand gevoeld door cabaretier, columnist en TU-docent Jasper van Kuijk. In de discussie die daarop volgt, wordt het publiek van harte uitgenodigd mee te doen.

De sprekers van deze avond zijn:

Just Herder - Professor of Interactive Mechanisms and Mechatronics

Harrie Weinans - Professor of Tissue Biomechanics and Implants

Wouter Serdijn - Professor in Bio-Electronics

Project March

Deze editie van ‘Professoren in de Theaterarena’ wordt georganiseerd i.s.m. het ‘Explore your Brain’ evenement van de TU Delft Library in het kader van het 175 jarig bestaan van de TU Delft.

Over Professoren in de Arena

In nauwe samenwerking met de TU Delft en de universiteiten van Leiden en Rotterdam zetten wij in een theatrale setting steeds drie spraakmakende hoogleraren op het podium rondom een actueel thema. Deze onderwerpen worden van verschillende kanten belicht, vanuit de harde wetenschap en/of maatschappelijke en ethische hoek. In een magazine-achtig format met korte colleges, stand-up colums wordt u bijgepraat en doet u mee in de discussie.

Locatie: Theatercafé, Theater de Veste

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Microelectronics Colloquium

Microelectronics Department Colloquium

Daniele Cavallo, Vasiliki Giagka, Fabio Sebastiano, Rob Remis

On Wednesday March 15 the next Microelectronics colloquium wil take place, including four lectures by staff members.

Please register online by completing the form.

  • Vasso Giagka
    Flexible bioelectronic medicines

    Abstract: Bioelectronic medicines are the next generation of neuromodulation devices: small active three-dimensional neural interfaces able to modulate nerve activity by targeting a specific neural region. They aim to treat a number of conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, in a tailored (per individual) and reversible fashion, avoiding the side effects of conventional drug-based interventions (pharmaceuticals). They achieve so by recording signals from the respective nerves, extracting information and using it as feedback to electrically stimulate the neural region in a closed-loop manner.

    Current technologies for active implants have not yet managed to achieve the miniaturisation and integration levels required for the development of bioelectronic medicines. For such breakthrough devices, novel concepts need to be explored, developed, and tested.

    In this talk I will present my current activities as well as my vision on realizing the first flexible three-dimensional graphene active implant, for safe chronic neural stimulation and recording from the peripheral nerves.

  • Fabio Sebastiano
    Cryo-CMOS for Quantum Computing: does it work?

    Quantum computing holds the promise to change our lives by efficiently solving computing problems that are intractable today, such as simulation of quantum systems for synthesis of materials and drugs. A quantum computer comprises both a quantum processor and a classical electronic controller to operate and read out the quantum devices. The quantum processor must be cooled at cryogenic temperature in order to show quantum behavior, thus making it unfeasible to wire thousands of signals from the cryogenic quantum devices to a room-temperature controller.

    While this issue can be solved by placing also the electronic controller at cryogen¬ic temperature, which electronic technology is the best choice for its implementation? This talk will address the challenges of building such electronic controller, and answer whether a standard CMOS technology can be employed for the required analog and digital circuits operating at 4 K and below.

  • Daniele Cavallo
    Advanced Antenna Arrays for Modern Radar and Communication Systems

    Abstract: Several of today’s radar and wireless communication applications are shifting their operation to higher frequency to fulfil more demanding requirements on resolution, compactness and data rates. For this reason, there is a growing need to develop low-cost integrated circuit transceivers working at millimeter and sub-millimeter waves.

    However, on-chip antennas are currently characterized by very poor radiation efficiency and extremely narrow bandwidth. My approach of combining the concepts of connected arrays with artificial dielectrics will solve the inefficiency problem and enable high-efficiency on-chip antenna designs.

    Similar concepts can be also realized at microwave frequencies in printed circuit board, allowing for low-cost phased array antennas with state-of-the-art performance in terms of scan range, bandwidth and polarization purity.

  • Rob Remis
    Imaging with Waves

    We present an overview of our current wave field imaging and inversion research. Effective inversion strategies for important applications in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), nano-optics, and subsurface monitoring will be discussed. In particular, dielectric shimming (shaping of the radio frequency field in MRI) as well as inversion algorithms that determine the dielectric properties of various tissue types based on measured MRI data will be considered, and state-of-the-art model-order reduction techniques for large-scale wave propagation problems will be discussed as well.


MS3 seminar

Capabilities and Research Activities at the University of Oklahoma Advanced Radar Research Center

Prof. Nathan A. Goodman
The Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma

The Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) at the University of Oklahoma consists of a vibrant group of faculty and students from both engineering and meteorology, focused on solving challenging radar problems and preparing the next generation of students. Through the collaborative nature instilled in its members, the ARRC has proven effective at developing synergy between science and engineering in the field of radar. The ARRC resides in state-of-art Radar Innovations Laboratory, a one-of-a-kind and unrivalled facility for radar research, development, and education. This 35,000-sqft facility includes microwave labs, advanced fabrication capability, and two anechoic chambers.

Bio Prof. Goodman: Nathan A. Goodman received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1995, 1997, and 2002, respectively. From 1996 to 1998, he was an RF systems engineer for Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX., and from 2002 to 2011, he was a faculty member in the ECE Department of the University of Arizona, Tucson. He is now a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Research for the Advanced Radar Research Center at the University of Oklahoma, Norman.


MS3 seminar

MS3 Master Event

Come to learn about our group and current Master Thesis Projects...

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PhD Thesis Defence

Monolithic 3D Wafer Level Integration Applied for Smart LED Wafer Level Packaging

Zahra Kolahdouz Esfahani

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Microelectronics Introduction Colloquium

Introduction 3 new Tenure Trackers

Masoud Babaie, Morteza Alavi, Faruk Uysal

On December 12 we organize the next Microelectronics Colloquium to introduce three new Assistant Professors (Tenure Trackers) of the Microelectronics department. They are happy to present a lecture about their research.

The colloquium start at 15.00 hrs. there will be a drink afterwards in the foyer.
Location: Theatre of Culture Builing (38) Mekelweg 10.
Please register online if you want to attend, latest December 5.

  • Masoud Babaie: Pushing The Limits of CMOS Circuits for Emerging Technologies
    Within the next few years, quantum processors, Fifth Generation (5G) cellular systems and the wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) are expected to see significant deployment to realize more integration between the physical and digital worlds, promising enormous computation power, high data rate communications and enabling more objects to be remotely sensed and controlled.

    This talk will address some of the main challenges in the design and implementation of IoT devices, mm-wave 5G transceivers, and cryogenic CMOS controller for quantum computers. An overview of my past and ongoing research activities will be also presented, with emphasis on novel solutions to improve power efficiency and spectral purity of RF/mm-wave transceivers.

  • Morteza Alavi: Universal Transmitters for 5G
    Today, our daily activities are intertwined with the Internet. The ever-growing demand to swiftly get access to the data-cloud systems leads to huge data traffic. In order to seamlessly transmit and receive these gigantic data, _ 40 GB, agile radio-frequency (RF) transceivers are inevitable.

    These radios must be capable of supporting the current and future communication standards such as 5th generation of wireless mobile communications. The ultimate goal is that they can be implemented as universal radios whose modes of operation can be defined by their clients. To address these demands, RF transmitters are currently reinvented and are directed towards digital-intensive architecture. In this short presentation, we will briefly describe the strengths,possibilities, and challenges that exist for these advanced transmitters. First and foremost, the concept of RF-DAC based transmitters will be introduced. Next, the talk will review various RF-DAC based transmitters that have already been implemented at ELCA. Eventually, the presentation will concisely unveil the future directions of the research of these software-defined transmitters at ELCA.

  • Faruk Uysal: Distributed Radar Networks: Beyond a single radar
    The number of operational radar is rapidly increasing due to the growing demand of the remote sensing. Software defined radio and emerging single-chip radar technology make use of radars in every aspect of life such as autonomous driving, safety and security applications. With the increase of active transmitters, spectrum management and coexistence started to become a concern for some radar systems. In this talk, the previous applications of waveform, frequency agility will be reviewed to bring multi-functionality to the modern radar system. Finally, we will discuss the future research for distributed radar networks and how to fuse data from various radars to acquire different aspects of a target to be viewed simultaneously.


MSc BME Thesis Presentation

Wireless Power Transfer and Optogenetic Stimulation of Freely Moving Rodents

Farnaz Nassiri Nia

Animal studies are commonly used to test the feasibility and effectiveness of promising novel neuroscience research ideas. One such new technique is optogenetic stimulation, which refers to stimulation of the brain by means of light. Current optogenetic stimulation methods use tethered setups and, typically, the animal-under-study is put into a fixed position. This introduces stress, an obvious reduction in animal welfare, and may thus influence the experimental results. Hence, an untethered setup is highly desirable. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose a complete wireless optogenetic stimulation setup, which allows for full freedom of movement for multiple rodents-under-study in a 40x40x20 cm environment.

This thesis includes a thorough design space exploration and the subsequent development of: an inductive wireless link, a wireless receiver module that resides on the animal, and novel micro-LED array implants.


ECTM Fall meeting

From Devices to Systems: New MEMS for radio frequency applications

Cristian Cassella
North-eastern University, Boston

We would like to invite you to our Laboratory of Electronic Components, Technology and Materials (ECTM) 2016 Autumn event with a special guest lecture. The lecture will be given by Dr. Cristian Cassella who is currently an associate research scientist in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at North-eastern University, Boston. His talk will cover:

“The operation and performance of two new-classes of Aluminium Nitride (AlN) piezoelectric RF resonators. The first is a fully-passive MEM-based sensor for near-zero power detection in radios. Such sensor behaves as a trigger capable of activating the CMOS circuitry through extremely low-power (-60 dBm) wake-up signatures. The achievement of such a low-power RF-sensor is a key advance towards the commercialization of energy-efficient wireless platforms, with supreme battery-time. The second system is a MEMS-based RF circulator for multiband SPAR platforms, thus relying on the same carrier frequency for both transmitter and receiver modules.”

We will have the following program with plenty of room for questions:

11:00 – 11:40 Dr. Cristian Cassella From Devices to Systems: New MEMS for radio frequency applications
11:40 – 12:05 Nikolas Gaio Next generation of in vitro test
12:05 – 12:30 Dr. Paolo Sberna TFTs fabricated on paper using waste materials


PhD Thesis Defence

Mingzhi Dong

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PhD Thesis Defence

Jianlin Huang

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Special Celebrative Seminar: New model of Sino-Dutch R&D cooperation


Since the establishment of TU Delft's Beijing Research Centre (BRC) in 2012, 10 PhD researchers have been enrolled for this unique program in close cooperation with our Chinese Academic Partners. We are very pleased that the first two BRC PhD candidates will have their PhD thesis defence on September 19 2016, in the Aula of Delft University of Technology.

To celebrate this important milestone, we would like to invite you to join a special seminar after the defences, about the New model of Sino-Dutch R&D cooperation, to share the experiences, look to the future and raise the glass together.

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PhD Thesis Defence

Pengfei Sun

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PhD Thesis Defence

Miki Trifunovic

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

In-vivo multicell inferior olivary recordings: alternative design methods for creating cheap and flexible electrode structures

Joost Kerpels

In order to allow neuroscientists to do in-vivo recordings on hard to reach brain tissue, such as the Inferior Olivary Complex, specially designed electrodes are required. Although a variety of electrodes are commercially available, they are usually expensive and it is hard to rapid prototype new designs.

This thesis describes the design process of three electrode array designs, each improved based on the findings of the previous one. The first design was made using a FlexPCB production technique, on which gold spots were added to create conducting measuring sites. The second design combined this technique with commercial microwire electrodes. The third design used 3d-print technology combined with microwire electrodes to create an electrode array.

All designs were tested in in vivo measurements on mice. Although successful measurements were done, the robustness and reproducibility needs to improve in order for this technique to really be applicable in a laboratory environment. Furthermore, the peripherals need to be improved in order to minimize the system to create a wearable system and perform recordings on wake animals.

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BBQ Theme Meeting

From Microelectronics Packaging to Power Electronics Packaging

Prof. Ferreira TU of Delft

It is a clear trend that increasing number of advanced microelectronic packaging technologies and know-how are being transferred to power electronics applications. We’re glad to welcome Prof.  dr. Braham Ferreira, the president of IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS), will join us and give an informal talk regarding his view of this trend, focusing on the challenges and opportunities. To provide a wide platform some IEEE members from power electronics society are invited as well, to share their knowledge during social networking. This summer event offers a great opportunity for CPMT members to broaden their views, and to seek new collaboration chances.

Program:
18.00 walk-in with drinks and BBQ
18.30 Prof. Ferreira of TU Delft: “From Microelectronics Packaging to Power Electronics Packaging”
18:45 Questions and discussions, together with drinks and BBQ, networking
21:00 Closing and drinks

Location:
TU Delft Campus, FreeZone D

Cost:
For IEEE CPMT members: Free
For others: 5 Euro

If you would like to join our summer event, please register by sending an email to Pan Liu: p.liu-1@tudelft.nl before the 15th of July 2016.

For more information, please contact Jing Zhang (Chair of IEEE CPMT Benelux Chapter) by e-mail: j.zhang-1@tudelft.nl

 

 


ECTM annual review


PhD Thesis Defence

Rene Poelma

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PhD Thesis Defence

Thesis defence Maryam Yazdan Mehr: Organic Materials Degradation

Maryam Yazdan Mehr

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Thermally Driven Sound Source: Application of CNT nanofoams

Hengqian (Daniel) Yi


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Wafer Scale Flexible Interconnect Fabrication for Heterogeneous Integration

Jian Li


ECTM Fall meeting

Quantum to brain

Juan Alfaro Barrantes, Daniel Yi, Marta Kluba, William Quiros Solano

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Conferences

IEEE MEMS abstract dead-line


ECTM Summer meeting

Future electronic devices

Hong Wah Chan, Daniel Yi, Yuanxing Xu, Paolo Sberna


PhD Thesis Defence

Silicon Carbide Technologies applied to MEMS Nanoreactors for in-situ Transmission Electron Microscopy

Bruno Morana

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PhD Thesis Defence

Thesis defence Negin Golshani: New detector technology for SEM imaging (Silicon Drift Detectors using boron layer)

Negin Golshani

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PhD Thesis Defence

Thesis defence Giuseppe Fiorentino

Giuseppe Fiorentino

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PhD Thesis Defence

Thesis defence Saeed Khosferat Pakazad

Saeed Khoshfetrat Pakazad

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Acoustically Induced Microenvironments

Armando Galicia Naranjo


PhD Thesis Defence

Fast qualification of solder reliability in solid state lighting system

Jing Zhang

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Conferences

IEEE Sensors abstract dead-line


PhD Thesis Defence

Thesis defence Aslihan Arslan

Aslihan Arslan

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Conferences

Eurosensors 2015 abstract dead-line


ECTM Spring meeting


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Master thesis defence Nikolas Gaio

Nikolas Gaio

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QuTech Seminar

Designs for quantum information hybrid devices and systems

Prof. Kae Nemoto
National Institute of Informatics, Quantum Information Sciences, Tokyo, Japan

There have been many architectures for quantum computer and quantum information devices proposed, yet we face a gap between these proof-of-principle idea and feasible quantum devices. We focus on an integrated cavity device based on a single diamond NV center to identify the problems and obstacles by integrating necessary elements to perform computational tasks.

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MEST Symposium

THE SILICON CRYSTAL BALL

Symposium on silicon technology -?where speakers from industry, academia and from leading research?centers?within?Netherlands and from abroad will cover the latest advancements and challenges in silicon technology.

Speakers

  • P. de Jager( ASML) Lithography beyond EUV
  • E. Vreugdenhil (ASML) 3D-NAND Flash: vertical stacking of new thin-film gate-all-around transistors
  • M. Pelgrom (PelgromConsulting) Statistical design has the future
  • Z. Tokei (IMEC) Wiring in 3D
  • F. Rosenboom (TU Eindhoven) Plasma etching for continued semiconductor scaling
  • S. Hamdioui (TU Delft) Computing for Data-Intensive Applications: Beyond CMOS and beyond Von Neumann
  • J. Dorgelo (Marvell) Terabit NAND Flash comes with advanced error correction

Open to all

It is FREE for all?Msc, PhD, PD and Professors in Micro-electronics, Computer engineering and Telecommunications. Don't forget to REGISTER?at?www.mest-delft.nl

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PhD Thesis Defence

Thesis defence Vahid Mohammadi

Vahid Mohammadi

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MEST event

TU Delft in ISSCC 2015

Program:

9:00 Prof. Kofi Makinwa Welcome
9:10 A. Carimatto A 67,392 SPAD PVTB-Compensated Multi-Channel Digital SiPMwith 432 column-Parallel 48ps 17b TDCs for Endoscopic Time-of-Flight PET
9:50 M. Shahmohammadi A 1/f Noise Up-conversion Reduction Technique Applied to Class-D and Class-F Oscillators
10:15 R. Quan A 4600um2 1.5oC (3s) 0.9kS/s Thermal-Diffusivity Temperature Sensor with VCO-Based Readout
10:40 Break
10:55 L. Xu A 110dB SNR ADC with +/-30V Input Common-Mode Range and 8uV offset for Current Sensing Applications
11:35 Y. He A 0.05-mm2 1-V Capacitance-to-Digital Converter Based on Period Modulation
12:00 H.Jiang A 30-ppm <80-nJ Ring-Down-Based Readout Circuit for Resonant Sensors

There will be free pizza from 12:45 to 13:15


Conferences

Graphene week abstract dead-line


PhD Thesis Defence

PhD thesis defence Jin Zhang

Jin Zhang

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ECTM Christmas drink


Nano-Optomechanical read-out for Microcantilever Sensors

Yi Liu


Printed graphene and silicon

Xingyu Liu


Direct fabrication of micron-scale structures using Super Inkjet technology

Dr. Kazuhiro Murata, Mr. Kotaro Shimizu
SITechnology, Inc.

We have developed a super-fine inkjet technology (SIJ) that enables extremely fine pattern formation using droplets measuring less than 1 micrometer in diameter. By using conductive ink based on nano-metal particles, direct fabrication of circuits and three-dimensional structures having a feature size of just a few microns are achieved. Moreover the SIJ is capable of printing with a wide variety of inks, for example, insulators, organic semiconductors, light emitting polymers, bio-materials and UV curable polymers. The potential of the SIJ technology and its application to cutting-edge areas, such as flexible electronics, printed electronics, fine interconnect and others will be shown

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Low temperature fine pitch vertical wafer level interconnection using copper nanoparticles

Yorick Carisey

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Monolithic Integration of light sensor readout system for multi-functional LED wafer-level package based on BICMOS process technology

Teng Ma


MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Monolithic Integration of rectifiers and drivers for low power SSL Application on Flex-to-Rigid Substrate

Manjunath Venkatesh Ramachandrappa


Dimes colloquia of Prof. dr. ShaoJun Wei and Prof. Zewen Liu

?Several Key Technologies for Emerging Applications? and ?Recent MEMS/NEMs research progress in IMETU?

ShaoJun Wei, Zewen Liu

ShaoJun Wei: Several Key Technologies for Emerging Applications
There are many emerging applications, such as cloud computing, big data, mobile internet, internet of things (IoT) , wearable device, smart hardware, and etc.. All of them need integrated circuits. With a huge population basis, China has an inborn advantages in this circumstance but with many challenges. Smart sensor, extremely low power pre-processing, micro assembly, high energy efficiency computing, low power high reliable memories are indispensable. We are entering a different ear while technologies we are familiar today should be pushed to their limits. In this presentation, the background of mobile internet, wearable devices, implanted hardware/software platform, IoT will be introduced and then several related technologies will be discussed with the emphasis on 3D Nand and reconfigurable computing. As these emerging applications are rapidly developing, it is very difficult to predict their evolution. Although semiconductors surely play a key role in these applications, with nanometer feature size and very high cost, how to find a way to support the low price and low margin applications is a big challenge.

Zewen Liu: Recent MEMS/NEMs research progress in IMETU
The MEMS and sensors research activities in IMETU ranges from process, materials to devices and packaging. A diversity of device had been recently developed such as sensors and MEMS energy harvester, super-capacitor for energy storage, microlens and RF MEMS. With the fast technology evolution, NEMS devices such as grapheme based device, nanohole and cantilevers are also explored which opens novel application in trace chemical sensing, flexible electronics and single DNA molecule detection. The highlights of the presentation are RF MEMS for modern communication and Nanopores for future DNA sequencing application. The prospect of integration of all devices on a chip for future IOT or smart city and the possible technical challenges will be also discussed.


ECTM Meeting

2014 Autumn Meeting

Cinzia Silvestri, Miki Trifunovic, Xueming Li, Violeta Prodanovic

I would like to invite you to the ECTM 2014 Fall meeting on Wednesday, Oct 15, 1 pm at DIMES colloquium room.

Program:
Cinzia Silvestri: ?Electro-thermal simulation and characterization of vertically aligned CNTs for thermal management applications?

Miki Trifunovic: ?Solution-processed poly-Si TFTs fabricated at a maximum processing temperature of 150C?

Xueming Li: ?Miniaturized particulate matter sensor for portable air quality monitoring devices?

Violeta Prodanović: ?Fabrication of Ultra Thin Transmission Dynodes for Electron Amplification?

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Dimes Colloquium

Linear and nonlinear springs in electrostatic micro-actuators

David Elata
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

In this presentation I will discuss the static and dynamic responses of mechanical springs that are used in electrostatic actuators. With respect to quasi-static applications, I will show how nonlinear mechanical springs can be used to counteract the nonlinear electrostatic attraction forces in gap-closing actuators. Instead of the pull-in instability, we may achieve an extended stable range with a linear voltage-displacement relation. Alternatively, beyond what would have been the pull-in point, we may achieve a constant voltage for any displacement. This effectively turns the transducer into a rechargeable mechanical battery, which is a neat design though mostly impractical. With respect to dynamic applications, I will show why the standard folded beam suspension, which is supposed to be linear by design, induces a nonlinear response in electrostatic comb-drive resonators. I will present a new suspension design which solves this problem.


MEST Colloquium

Electronics in Nano-Era: Are we Facing a Reliability Wall?

Said Hamdioui

The talk will address technology scaling and its impact on different aspects of IC and electronics, and in particular the emerging reliability bottlenecks. First the basics of scaling will be covered, together with its impact on integration density, performance and power. The technology outlook will be analyzed in order to extract the challenges with respect to design, test and reliability both for near and long terms. IC realization process will be (re) defined while considering the technology trends and business pressure. Possible ways for the realization of future systems will be discussed.


DIMES colloquium

Probabilistic Design for Reliability in Electronics and Photonics: Role, Attributes, Challenges

Prof.dr. Ephraim Suhir
Portland State University, USA

The recently suggested probabilistic design for reliability (PDfR) concept is based on:?1) highly focused and highly cost-effective failure oriented accelerated testing (FOAT),??aimed at understanding the physics of the anticipated failures and at quantifying, on the probabilistic basis, the outcome of FOATs conducted for the most vulnerable element(s) of the product of interest and the most likely and meaningful combination of possible stressors (the principle of superposition does not work in reliability engineering), and? 2) simple and physically meaningful predictive modeling (PM), both analytical and computer-aided, aimed at bridging the gap between what one "sees" as a result of FOAT and what he/she will supposedly "get" in the field. FOAT and PM based sensitivity analysis (SA) algorithms are developed as by-products.

The PDfR concept is based on the recognition of the fact that nobody and nothing is perfect, and that the difference between a highly reliable and insufficiently reliable product is ?merely? in the level of its probability of failure. If this probability (evaluated for the anticipated loading conditions and the given time in operation) is not acceptable, then such a SA can be effectively employed to determine what could be possibly changed, in terms of materials, geometries, application restrictions, etc., to improve the situation.

The PDfR analysis enables one also to check if the product is not "over-engineered", i.e., is not superfluously robust: if it is, it might be too costly: although the operational reliability cannot be low, it does not have to be higher than necessary either, but has to be adequate for the given product and application. This means that when both reliability and cost-effectiveness are imperative, ability to quantify reliability is a must. In this seminar the major PDfR concepts will be illustrated by case studies and practical examples. Although some advanced and subtle PDfR predictive modeling techniques have been recently developed for quantifying and assuring reliability of electronic and photonic products, especially those intended for aerospace applications, the practical examples addressed employ more or less elementary analytical models.

Biography

Prof. Dr. E. Suhir is Fellow of ASME, IEEE, American Physical Society (APS), Institute of Physics (UK), Society of Optical Engineers (SPIE), International Microelectronics and Packaging Society (IMAPS), Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), Foreign Full Member (Academician) of the NAE, Ukraine, and Fulbright Scholar in Information Technologies. He has authored above 300 publications (patents, books, book chapters, papers) and received numerous professional awards, including 2004 ASME Worcester Read Warner Medal for outstanding contributions to the permanent literature of engineering and laying a foundation of a new discipline ?Structural Analysis in Electronics and Photonics Systems?. Dr. Suhir is the third Russian American, after Steven Timoshenko and Igor Sikorsky, who received this prestigious award. Dr. Suhir is co-founder of the ASME Journal of Electronic Packaging and served as its Technical Editor for eight years (1994-2002).

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MEST welcome drink

Meet and greet your friends and colleagues with a FREE Drink to say Hallo !!!

Organized by MEST student association

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MSc ME Thesis Presentation

Opto-electronic MEMS oscillator for resonant pressure sensing

Lalit Kumar