Publications related to Dynamic control of high-voltage actuator arrays by light-pattern projection on photoconductive switches

Additively manufactured stretchable zipping electrostatic actuators

The use of soft and stretchable materials allows the development of adaptive robotic systems and human-machine interfaces that are more natural and comfortable to interact with. One of the application fields that benefits the most from these compliant mate ...

EPFL2024

Educational Soft Underwater Robot with an Electromagnetic Actuation

Robert Marius Hennig

As demonstrated by the Soft Robotics Toolkit Platform, compliant robotics pose an exciting educational opportunity. Underwater robotics using soft undulating fins is an expansive research topic with applications such as exploration of underwater life or re ...

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc2024

Advanced Silicon and SWIR Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes: Design, Simulation, and Characterization

Ekin Kizilkan

Low-level light detection with high spatial and timing accuracy is a growing area of interest by virtue of applications such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), biomedical imaging, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and quantum applications. Single-phot ...

EPFL2024

Silicon CMOS and InGaAs(P)/InP SPADs for NIR/SWIR detection

Utku Karaca

Applications demanding imaging at low-light conditions at near-infrared (NIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) wavelengths, such as quantum information science, biophotonics, space imaging, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), have accelerated the develo ...

EPFL2024

Permanently magnetized elastomer rotating actuator using traveling waves

Herbert Shea

We report a soft actuator that generates continuous rotation of an object placed on it by electromagnetically exciting circular travelling waves in a soft disk. The disk, that serves as the stator, is made of a stretchable composite consisting of segments ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

Carbon based printed electrodes for DEAs: study of pad, inkjet, and stencil printing

Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Stefania Maria Aliki Konstantinidi, Armando Matthieu Walter, Simon Holzer

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have raised interest due to their remarkable capabilities in various applications, such as soft robotics, haptic feedback systems, and biomedical devices. To harness the full potential of DEAs, the choice of the electr ...

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)2024

Inversing the actuation cycle of dielectric elastomer actuators for a facial prosthesis

Paolo Germano, Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Alexis Boegli, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Stefania Maria Aliki Konstantinidi, Quentin Philippe Mario De Menech

Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs) are a type of smart material described as compliant capacitors. They show impressive performances as soft actuators, such as a high strain and fast response. Nonetheless, replicating natural muscle function with DEAs h ...

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)2024

Polarization-enhanced GaN Schottky barrier diodes: Ultra-thin InGaN for high breakdown voltage and low Ron

Elison de Nazareth Matioli, Alessandro Floriduz, Zheng Hao

In this work, we present a concept that leverages the strong piezoelectric polarization field in InGaN, which counteracts the external electric field at reverse bias. We show that despite the smaller InGaN band-gap and lower critical electric field, its st ...

2024

Single-Photon Avalanche Diode Image Sensors for Harsh Radiation Environments

Ming-Lo Wu

The space industry has experienced substantial growth in recent years, leading to rapid advancements in space exploration and space-based technologies. Consequently, the study of electronics and sensor performance in extreme environments has become crucial ...

EPFL2024

SPAD Developed in 55 nm Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS Technology Achieving Near 90% Peak PDP

Claudio Bruschini, Edoardo Charbon, Francesco Gramuglia, Myung Jae Lee, Ekin Kizilkan, Pouyan Keshavarzian, Won Yong Ha

We present a single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) developed in 55 nm bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technology, which achieves high photon detection probability (PDP) while its breakdown voltage is lower than 20 V. To enhance the PDP performance, the SPAD junctio ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

Frequency response of fiber reinforced DEAs

Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Stefania Maria Aliki Konstantinidi, Markus Koenigsdorff

Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEAs) have emerged as versatile and promising devices for a multitude of applications, including soft robotics, haptic interfaces, and artificial muscles. DEAs are an interesting soft actuator technology due to their high en ...

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)2024

Disentangling Thermal from Electronic Contributions in the Spectral Response of Photoexcited Perovskite Materials

Majed Chergui, Thomas Charles Henry Rossi, Lijie Wang, Malte Oppermann

Disentangling electronic and thermal effects in photoexcited perovskite materials is crucial for photovoltaic and optoelectronic applications but remains a challenge due to their intertwined nature in both the time and energy domains. In this study, we emp ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Integrated Wireless Power, Data Communication, and Thermal Sensing System for Autonomous Multisite Brain Implants

Implanted medical devices (IMDs) have been widely developed to support the monitoring and recording of biological data inside the body or brain. Wirelessly powered IMDs, a subset of implantable electronics, have been proposed to eliminate the limitations r ...

EPFL2024

High energy-density electrostatic actuators for soft robotics

Sylvain Thomas Schaller

This thesis reports high energy-density electrostatic actuators for use in soft robotics. This thesis has two main parts: a) a detailed study of electro-adhesion using microfabricated electrodes, and b) a flexi-ble fiber-shaped linear motor. Electro-adhesi ...

EPFL2024

Morphological and Material Programability of a Hall-Effect Based Soft Tactile Sensors

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Sudong Lee

The different receptors in human skin show not only diversity in the stimuli to which they respond, but also variable sensitivity and directionality. This is often determined by their location or morphology, and can play an important role in filtering or a ...

IEEE2024

A Cavity-Microscope for Quantum Simulations with Locally-Controllable All-to-All Interactions

Nick Jacob Sauerwein

This thesis presents the development, construction, and benchmark of an experimental platform that combines cold fermionic 6Li atoms with locally controllable light-matter interactions. To enable local control, a new device, the cavity-microscope, was crea ...

EPFL2024

Lithium tantalate photonic integrated circuits for volume manufacturing

Tobias Kippenberg, Kai Huang, Chen Yang, Mikhail Churaev, Xinru Ji, Yang Chen, Zihan Li, Alisa Davydova, Xi Wang, Junyin Zhang

Electro-optical photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on lithium niobate (LiNbO3) have demonstrated the vast capabilities of materials with a high Pockels coefficient1,2. They enable linear and high-speed modulators operating at complementary metal–oxi ...

2024

On-Chip Fully Reconfigurable Artificial Neural Network in 16 nm FinFET for Positron Emission Tomography

Claudio Bruschini, Edoardo Charbon, Andrada Alexandra Muntean, Emanuele Ripiccini

Smarty is a fully-reconfigurable on-chip feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) with ten integrated time-to-digital converters (TDCs) designed in a 16 nm FinFET CMOS technology node. The integration of TDCs together with an ANN aims to reduce system ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

Hybrid Quadratic Programming - Pullback Bundle Dynamical Systems Control

Aude Billard, Bernardo Fichera

Dynamical System (DS)-based closed-loop control is a simple and effective way to generate reactive motion policies that well generalize to the robotic workspace, while retaining stability guarantees. Lately the formalism has been expanded in order to handl ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2023

Tailor-made Piezoelectric Elastomer Materials

Francis Owusu

Recent advancements in miniature devices with higher computational capabilities and ultralow power consumption have accelerated the development of wearable sensors, actuators, and energy harvesters everywhere. The ultimate aim of such a technological revol ...

EPFL2023