In the United States, Glaucoma affects over three million people and has become the second leading cause for blindness. Currently, a barrage of different techniques are used to treat the underlying cause of most Glaucoma cases: high intraocular pressure (IOP). High IOP is the primary cause of open-angle glaucoma and is treated using a variety of drugs, laser surgeries, and traditional surgeries...

A fully automatic macromodeling methodology to generate scalable reduced-order models for microelectromechanical systems is presented in this paper. Krylov subspace methods are used to generate reduced-order models from detailed higher-order models of the device under consideration. The entire methodology is implemented in a symbolic computation environment to preserve dependencies on physical ...

This paper describes a study to characterize the performance of surface micromachined electrostatic actuators, with a brief introduction to some MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) mirrors developed at BU incorporating these actuators. Fixed-fixed actuators were extensively tested to determine suitability for optical applications, and specffically for an adaptive optics imagining system. The ...

Polarization handling in suspended silicon photonics has the potential to enable new applications in fields such as optomechanics, photonic microelectromechanical systems, and mid-infrared photonics. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate a suspended polarization beam splitter on a silicon-on-insulator waveguide platform, based on an asymmetric directional coupler. Our device presents pola...

In this paper, we report a novel, miniature Fourier transform spectrometer with a linear architecture that works by sampling a standing wave. The spectrometer consists of an electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical mirror with on-resonance displacement of up to 65 m, a thin-film photodetector, and an electrical back plane for actuating the mirror. The integrated device offers mirror st...

Determining optimally designed structures is important for diverse fields of science and engineering. Here we describe a procedure for calculating the optimal design of a switch and apply the method to a bistable microelectromechanical system relay switch. The approach focuses on characterizing the unstable transition state connecting the two stable equilibria to control the force displacements...

An iris-type variable aperture fabricated using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology is described. The device contains four shutter blades, which are each driven by a separate actuator and translated synchronously to create a square aperture. Devices based on buckling mode electrothermal actuators and formed by deep reactive ion etching of bonded silicon-on-insulator are demonstrate...

We demonstrate the capabilities of a new optical microelectromechanical systems device that we specifically developed for broadband femtosecond pulse shaping. It consists of a one-dimensional array of 100 independently addressable, high-aspect-ratio micromirrors with up to 3 μm stroke. We apply linear and quadratic phase modulations demonstrating the temporal compression of 800 and 400 nm pulse...

This paper reviews deposition, integration, and device fabrication of ferroelectric PbZrxTi1−xO3 (PZT) films for applications in microelectromechanical systems. As examples, a piezoelectric ultrasonic micromotor and pyroelectric infrared detector array are presented. A summary of the published data on the piezoelectric properties of PZT thin films is given. The figures of merit for various appl...

Drug delivery systems play a crucial role in the treatment and management of medical conditions. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies have allowed the development of advanced miniaturized devices for medical and biological applications. This Review presents the use of MEMS technologies to produce drug delivery devices detailing the delivery mechanisms, device formats employed, and...