New Members

As a member of the team, your primary mission is to create and contribute. You will learn a great deal along the way. Many students ask what they can learn to get a head start. This page is for you.

3-D CAD

Becoming proficient with Solid Works, Alibre, or Autodesk Inventor is very useful. Our team builds and fields devices that go into the world, incorporating MEMs die, printed circuit boards, electrical connectors, etc. An important step towards fabricating and building systems is designing and visualizing them in 3-D.

PCB layout software

Likewise, an important component to system realization is designing printed circuit boards (PCBs). Eagle, a very popular application, is used by our team. Eagle combines two levels of abstraction - schematic and physical layout. A head start at learning Eagle is very useful.

IC/MEMS Fab

Dry and wet growth of silicon dioxide on silicon wafers, photolithography, wet etching, dry etching, doping and diffusion, sputtering and E-beam evaporation of metals, lift-off processes, LPCVD, PECVD, HF vapor removal of silicon dioxide, these are the processes we use frequently in the fabrication of MEMS. Becoming proficient is a combination of “book learning” some basic concepts, and hands-on practice inside a cleanroom. The latter is not possible to learn off-site, but one can get a head start learning the concepts.

Wikipedia provides a great introduction: MEMS and IC Fabrication

Reviewing device fabrication flows is a great way to get experience with MEMS fabrication. Many of the group publications listed on this website provide fabrication flow schematics of devices we have made.

Finite Element Analysis

Our team uses the application COMSOL for advanced simulation work. Learning the basics provides a nice head start. COMSOL enables the numerical study of complex-shaped mechanical, fluidic, acoustical, and piezoelectric systems (and much more, really). Pick a simple example as not to get overwhelmed, and obtain experience creating a solid model, meshing the model, defining loads, running an analysis, and viewing results. COMSOL offers several tutorials and many more are available online.

Acoustics

The purpose of many devices we make is to launch and/or measure sound waves in gasses, liquids, or solids. We are typically concerned with the sound field created by vibrating devices (i.e. radiation). Here is a nice progression of topics to get started: plane wave equation derivation, acoustical impedance and reflection and transmission of plane waves, spherical waves and monopole radiation, spherical wave impedance, baffled piston radiation, and rectangular waveguides.

Professor Miles at SUNY Binghamton recently released an acoustics text, Physical Approach to Engineering Acoustics

At UT Austin, the graduate course sequence in acoustics uses a text by Professor Blackstock: Fundamentals of Physical Acoustics

Notes from Professor Hall's Fall 2018 Engineering Acoustics course are here: Engineering Acoustics Fall 2018

To explore the wide spectrum of disciplines under the Acoustics umbrella, check out the program from any recent meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). E.g. The 2019 San Diego Meeting Program

Transducers

Lumped parameter modeling is used extensively in the modeling of transducers, very commonly in the form of equivalent circuit models. Professor Hall’s notes from his Fall 2019 graduate course cover piezoelectric device physics and the modeling of piezoelectric sensors and actuators: Transducers Fall 2019.

Leo Beranek's Acoustics: Sound Fields and Transducers is a popular reference.