Publications related to Electromechanics

Effect of Native Oxide on Stress in Silicon Nanowires: Implications for Nanoelectromechanical Systems

Yusuf Leblebici, Zuhal Tasdemir, Mohammad Nasr Esfahani

Understanding the origins of intrinsic stress in Si nanowires (NWs) is crucial for their successful utilization as transducer building blocks in next-generation, miniaturized sensors based on nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). With their small size lead ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Ferroelectric Effects Probed by in situ Transmission Electron Microscopy

Reinis Ignatans

Ferroelectric perovskite oxides are widely used in sensors, actuators and optical modulators and, at the same time, they show promise for implementation in future applications such as energy storage, memory and cooling devices. At the infancy of the discov ...

EPFL2022

Magnetic Design of a Superconducting Toroidal Gantry for Hadron Therapy

Luca Bottura, Enrico Felcini, Bertrand Dutoit, Bertrand Dutoit

Hadron and proton therapy are cutting edge techniques for cancer treatment and a great development of specialized medical centers and research facilities is foreseen in the next decades. One of the main obstacles to the penetration of the use of charged pa ...

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2020

Manufacture and characterization of graphene membranes with suspended silicon proof masses for MEMS and NEMS applications

Luis Guillermo Villanueva Torrijo, Sayedeh Shirin Afyouni Akbari, Stefan Wagner

Graphene's unparalleled strength, chemical stability, ultimate surface-to-volume ratio and excellent electronic properties make it an ideal candidate as a material for membranes in micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS). However, the inte ...

2020

Inquiry-Based Learning with RoboGen: An Open-Source Software and Hardware Platform for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence

Dario Floreano, Joshua Evan Auerbach, Przemyslaw Mariusz Kornatowski, Alice Ghislaine Concordel

It has often been found that students appreciate hands-on work, and find that they learn more with courses that include a project than those relying solely on conventional lectures and tests. This type of project driven learning is a key component of “Inqu ...

2019

Dielectric Actuation Techniques at the Nanoscale: Piezoelectricity and Flexoelectricity

Kaitlin Marie Howell

Micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) have long shown their potential to disrupt the established technologies. Over the past 15 years, MEMS have become fundamental components in filters, accelerometers, gyroscopes and gas sensors. MEMS are n ...

EPFL2019

Integrated Gallium Phosphide Photonics

Katharina Schmeing

The integration of new materials mediating light-matter interaction in nanoscale devices is a persistent goal in nanophotonics. One of these materials is Gallium phosphide, which offers an attractive combination of a high refractive index (n=3.05 at a wave ...

EPFL2019

Self-sensing, tunable monolayer MoS2 nanoelectromechanical resonators

Andras Kis, Dumitru Dumcenco, Guilherme Migliato Marega, Sajedeh Manzeli

Excellent mechanical properties and the presence of piezoresistivity make single layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) viable candidates for integration in nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). We report on the realization of electromechanical ...

Nature Research2019

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

Stable and Passive High-Power Dual Active Bridge Converters Interfacing MVDC Grids

Drazen Dujic, Francisco Daniel Freijedo Fernández, Enrique Rodriguez Diaz

Dual active bridge (DAB) is a topology that is receiving more and more attention as a potential solution to interface dc grids of different voltage levels. From a system level, the implications of DABs on the stability of complex power systems are addresse ...

2018

Nano-electromechanical systems based on ultra-thin semiconductors

Sajedeh Manzeli

Nowadays, the interest in 2D materials has gone far beyond graphene. Specially, monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) offer a broad spectrum of electronic and optical properties, and show the potential to revolutionize the electronics indus ...

EPFL2018

Machine Learning Techniques to address classification issues in Reverse Engineering

Dimitrios Kyritsis, Jonathan Dekhtiar

This paper aims to provide a road map for future works related to reverse engineering field of expertise. Reverse Engineering, in a mechanical context, relates to any process working in a bottom-up fashion, namely that it goes from a lower level concept or ...

Springer-Verlag Berlin2017

Electrostatically actuated MEMs relay for high power applications

Yves Perriard, Christian Köchli, Florian Louis Copt

In this paper, a MEMs relay for high power application is investigated. This relay has to hold a current of the order of magnitude of the Ampere and is subject to harsh environment such as high temperature or vibrations which can lead to a premature dysfun ...

2016

Designing Low Power and Durable Digital Blocks Using Shadow Nanoelectromechanical Relays

Paolo Ienne, Hossein Asadi, Sadegh Yazdanshenas

Nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relays are a promising emerging technology that has gained widespread research attention due to its zero leakage current, sharp ON-OFF transitions, and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatibility. As a result, NEM rela ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2016

Soft micromachines with programmable motility and morphology

Mahmut Selman Sakar

Nature provides a wide range of inspiration for building mobile micromachines that can navigate through confined heterogenous environments and perform minimally invasive environmental and biomedical operations. For example, microstructures fabricated in th ...

Nature Research2016

Electromechanical oscillations in bilayer graphene

Andras Kis, Oleg Yazyev, Fernando Gargiulo, Gabriel Albert Autes, Sajedeh Manzeli, Mahmut Tosun, Mohamed Malik Benameur

Nanoelectromechanical systems constitute a class of devices lying at the interface between fundamental research and technological applications. Realizing nanoelectromechanical devices based on novel materials such as graphene allows studying their mechanic ...

Nature Research2015

NEM Relay Design with Biconditional Binary Decision Diagrams

Giovanni De Micheli, Pierre-Emmanuel Julien Marc Gaillardon, Luca Gaetano Amarù, Winston Jason Haaswijk

In this paper, we present an improved design flow for nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relay-based combinational logic circuits. Six-terminal NEM relays can be programmed to act as 2-to-1 multiplexers. We can therefore use NEM relays to implement arbitrary comb ...

IEEE2015

Force-displacement response of in-plane loaded URM walls with a dominating flexural mode

Katrin Beyer, Sarah Petry

This article presents a new mechanical model for the non-linear force-displacement response of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls developing a flexural rocking mode including their displacement capacity. The model is based on the plane section hypothesis and ...

2015

Closed-loop magnetic bearing and angular velocity control of a reaction sphere actuator

Yves Perriard, Leopoldo Rossini

This article presents the first closed-loop magnetic bearing and angular velocity experimental results of a reaction sphere actuator for satellite attitude control. The proposed reaction sphere is a permanent magnet spherical actuator whose rotor is suppor ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2015

Fabrication process and characterization of suspended graphene membranes for RF NEMS capacitive switches

Mihai Adrian Ionescu, Clara-Fausta Moldovan, Wolfgang Amadeus Vitale, Laurent Syavoch Bernard, Pankaj Sharma

The fabrication of a Nanoelectromechanical System (NEMS) capacitive switch consisting of a suspended multilayer graphene membrane, doubly clamped on a coplanar waveguide (CPW) is presented and its RF performance is evaluated. The scattering parameters are ...

Elsevier2015