The emergence and evolution of energy micro-generators during the last 2 decades has delivered a wealth harvesting powering solutions, with capability exploiting wide range motion types, from impulse low frequency irregular human motion, to broadband vibrations ultrasonic waves. It also created background engineering microsytems, including fabrication methods, system concepts optimal functional...

Title of thesis: MEMS CONVEYANCE: PIEZOELECTRIC ACTUATOR ARRAYS FOR RECONFIGURABLE RF CIRCUITS Mary Claire Tellers, Master of Science 2015 Thesis directed by: Professor Sarah Bergbreiter Department of Mechanical Engineering An array of piezoelectric cantilevers was designed, fabricated, and characterized for use as a micromanipulation surface in a reconfigurable RF circuit microfactory. The pro...

In this study, we fabricated piezoelectric energy harvesters composed of lead-free (K,Na)NbO3 (KNN) thin films and compared the power generation performance with PZT-thin film energy harvesters. Both of the piezoelectric thin films were deposited on Pt/Ti/Si cantilevers by rf-sputtering. The KNN and PZT thin films had perovskite structure, and showed the relative dielectric constants of 744 and...

A series of active piezoelectric diaphragms were fabricated and patterned with several geometrically defined Inter-Circulating Electrodes "ICE" and Interdigitated Ring Electrodes “IRE”. When a voltage potential is applied to the electrodes, the result is a radially distributed electric field that mechanically strains the piezoceramic along the Z-axis (perpendicular to the applied electric field...

The present work experimentally investigates the thermal effects of a synthetic jet actuator on the heat transfer performance of single-phase flow confined in a microchannel heat sink. The heat sink consisted of a single rectangular microchannel 500 μm wide, 300 μm deep and 26 mm long. Deionized water was employed as the cooling fluid. A synthetic jet actuator with a 100 μm diameter orifice was...

A closed-loop-controlled surface perturbation technique was developed for controlling the flow-induced sound in a flow duct and acoustic resonance inside downstream cavities. The surface perturbation was created by piezo-ceramic THUNDER (THin layer composite UNimorph Driver and sEnsoR) actuators embedded underneath the surface of a test model with a semi-circular leading edge. A modified closed...