MacDonald N.C. – TechConnect Briefs

Wicking Study of Nanostructured Titania Surfaces for Flat Heat Pipes

Ding C., Bogorzi P., Sigurdson M., Soni G., Meinhart C., MacDonald N.C., university of california, santa barbara, US

We report a wicking material based on nanostructured TiO2 (NST) for the application of flat heat pipes. This wicking material is formed by oxidizing Ti pillar structures in H2O2 solution. The NST surfaces shows nano-scale [...]

Nanocomposite Contact Material for MEMS Switches

Ding C., MacDonald N.C., university of california, santa barbara, US

This work reports the development of a nanostructured composite contact material for improving the contact reliability of MEMS switches. The nanocomposite material was integrated into a bulk titanium MEMS (BT-MEMS) switch which was fabricated using [...]

Bulk-Titanium Waveguide – a New Building Block for Microwave Planar Circuits

Huang X.T., Todd S., Ding C., MacDonald N.C., University of California at Santa Barbara, US

We present a new topology for planar microwave transmission line: bulk titanium waveguide. The waveguide is formed by deep trench etching, dielectric gap filling, and planarization. The high aspect ratio of the resulting structure provide [...]

A Nanoscale Composite Material for Enhanced Damage Tolerance in MEMS Applications

Paranjpye A., MacDonald N.C., Beltz G.E., university of california, santa barbara, US

A two-dimensional laminar composite material has been shown to exhibit enhanced damage tolerance due to zones of residual compressive stress. The damage tolerance appears as a threshold stress below which the structure does not fail [...]

SOI Processing of a Ring Electrokinetic Chaotic Micromixer

Zhang Y.T., Chen H., Mezic I., Meinhart C.D., Petzold L., MacDonald N.C., university of california, santa barbara, US

Micromixing has been an active research area in the past decade due to the rapid expanding application of the lab-on-a-chip system in life science. Using the silicon bulk micromachining technology, a ring electroosmotic micromixer, which [...]