Publications related to Quartz crisis

Long-life plastic optical fiber probes for scanning near-field optical microscope

Giovanni Dietler, Serguei Sekatski, Anton Smirnov, Ekaterina Rostova

Nowadays, sharpened glass fiber - made probes attached to a quartz tuning fork (TF) and exploiting the shear force - based feedback are by far the most popular in the field of SNOM. These probes are expensive, very fragile and their fabrication is difficul ...

SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING2018

MEMS Generator Study for an Embedded Energy Harvesting System

Jasha Poliakine

This work has been triggered by an industrial project targeting the development of a novel regulation system for a mechanical watch. Mechanical watches have been known for over a century as one of the finest example of energy autonomous devices, embodying ...

EPFL2018

Recent improvements on micro-thermocouple based SThM

Danick Briand

The scanning thermal microscope (SThM) has become a versatile tool for local surface temperature mapping or measuring thermal properties of solid materials. In this article, we present recent improvements in a SThM system, based on a micro-wire thermocoupl ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2017

Nanogap MEM resonators on SOI

Nicoleta-Diana Ciressan

Today's consumer electronics based on a large variety of time-keeping and frequency reference applications is based on quartz-crystal oscillators, because of their excellent performances in terms of quality factor, thermal and frequency stability. However, ...

EPFL2009

Analysis and modeling of electrostatic discharge in a tactile glass featured watch

Yves Perriard, Paolo Germano, Lionel Paratte, Daniele Demarco

Electrostatic discharge in quartz watches is becoming more and more important due to the use of plastic materials and tactile sensors. The discharge can lead to different type of dysfunction such as a simple reset, a latch-up, or the destruction of the ele ...

2007

Conception et optimisation multicritère des échappements libres pour montres-bracelets mécaniques

Thierry Conus

The watchmaking crisis of the nineteen-seventies in effect marked an interruption of scientific research into the working of mechanical watches. For the past few years, a revival of interest in these timepieces has given industrialists the financial resour ...

EPFL2007

Bio-inspired cellular machines : towards a new electronic paper architecture

Fabien Vannel

Information technology has only been around for about fifty years. Although the beginnings of automatic calculation date from as early as the 17th century (W. Schickard built the first mechanical calculator in 1623), it took the invention of the transistor ...

EPFL2007