Certains domaines d'applications tels que l'aérospatial, l'automobile ou le forage de haute profondeur peuvent nécessiter la visualisation de certains paramètres physiques dans des environnements hostiles. Les capteurs microélectroniques basés sur le silicium y atteignent souvent leurs limites, qui sont qualifiées de conditions « sévères ». Ce travail se base principalement sur l'étude de solutions de capteurs mécaniques fonctionnant en conditions sévères. Le principe de ces capteurs repose sur l'exploitation de transistors de mesures HEMT à base de nitrures III-V (III-N), à la fois piézoélectriques et semiconducteurs, qui reste stable en conditions sévères. La compréhension des interactions entre physique des semiconducteurs et physique des matériaux ainsi que la caractérisation de structures possibles pour la détection mécanique représentent les principaux enjeux de ce sujet de thèse. La modélisation mécanique analytique et numérique des structures étudiées a permis d'appréhender le comportement de structures piézoélectriques multicouches. Le couplage de ce modèle électromécanique avec un modèle électronique du capteur a permis d'établir la faisabilité du principe de détection ainsi que la linéarité de la réponse du capteur. La caractérisation des prototypes réalisés en cours de thèse ont corroboré la linéarité du capteur tout en faisant apparaître l'influence de nombreux effets parasites réduisant sa sensibilité à savoir les effets de résistance parasites et de piézorésistances variables. / Some industrial areas as oil, automotive and aerospace industries, require electromechanical systems working in harsh environments. An elegant solution is to use III–V materials alloys having semiconductor, piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties. These materials, particularly nitrides such as GaN or AlN, enable design of advanced devices suitable for harsh environment. By using free-standing structure coupled with sensing HEMT transistors that are stable at high temperatures, it is possible to obtain mechanical sensors suitable for harsh environments. This PhD thesis focuses on a cantilever-based strain sensor and a drumskin-based pressure sensor. Analytical models of both sensors have been developed and establish the feasibility of the sensing principle as well as its response linearity. The characterization tests of fabricated prototypes validate the possibility of measuring external mechanical load with both sensors. The linearity of the response has also been confirmed by experimental measurements. The experimental sensitivity is smaller than the theoretical one due to several parasitic effects not included in the model such as parasitic resistance and variable piezoresisitive effects.

In this study, gas sensing systems that are based on piezoelectric smart material and structures are proposed, designed, developed, and tested, which are mainly aimed to address the temperature dependent CO2 gas sensing in a real environment. The state-of-the-art of gas sensing technologies are firstly reviewed and discussed for their pros and cons. The adsorption mechanisms including physisorption and chemisorption are subsequently investigated to characterize and provide solutions to various gas sensors. Particularly, a QCM based gas sensor and a C-axis inclined zigzag ZnO FBAR gas sensor are designed and analyzed for their performance on room temperature CO2 gas sensing, which fall into the scope of physisorption. In contrast, a Langasite (LGS) surface acoustic wave (SAW) based acetone vapor sensor is designed, developed, and tested, which is based on the chemisorption analysis of the LGS substrate. Moreover, solid state gas sensors are characterized and analyzed for chemisorption-based sensitive sensing thin film development, which can be further applied to piezoelectric-based gas sensors (i.e. Ca doped ZnO LGS SAW gas sensors) for performance enhanced CO2 gas sensing. Additionally, an innovative MEMS micro cantilever beam is proposed based on the LGS nanofabrication, which can be potentially applied for gas sensing, when combined with ZnO nanorods deposition. Principal component analysis (PCA) is employed for cross-sensitivity analysis, by which high temperature gas sensing in a real environment can be achieved. The proposed gas sensing systems are designated to work in a high temperature environment by taking advantage of the high temperature stability of the piezoelectric substrates.

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Fiber optic temperature sensing has become a well-defined field in the past few decades [1] through the use of Fiber Bragg Gratings, Fabry-Perot interferometry, and pyrometry, to list several techniques in use today.  The use of fiber optics offers significant advantages over electronic sensing in terms of size and insensitivity to harsh conditions such as extreme temperatures and corrosive environments.  The availability of optical sapphire materials, including fibers, has allowed the creation of fiber optic sensing elements able to continuously operate at temperatures of 1600"C [2] or more, thus outstripping the abilities of many commonly used thermocouples (excluding platinum types R, S, and B) [3] which will also exhibit a sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, fiber optic sensing techniques provide a great deal of accuracy in temperature measurement over the entire working range of the sensor. The work documented in this thesis consists of efforts to minimize the overall footprint of a sapphire based extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometry (EFPI) temperature sensing element, as well as strides made in multiplexing the same element and reducing the error potential from cross sensitivity of the thermometer with applied strain.  This work has been variously funded by Pratt & Whitney and the Department of Energy. / Master of Science

Given potential risk factors in the lives of adolescents, parents are usually motivated to monitor and protect their adolescents. There is a need to better understand what combinations of parental dimensions and practice best influence an adolescent's propensity to disclose or conceal personal information with their parents. This paper examines how parenting dimensions (warmth, psychological control, and harsh punishment) and the parenting practice of solicitation influence an adolescent's propensity to disclose or conceal information. Adolescents in 106 families (53 females; predominantly Caucasian) reported on their mothers' and fathers' parenting dimensions as well as their parents' effort to solicit information. Factor analysis was conducted on the measure typically used for disclosure to test whether the items measured only disclosure or if two distinct adolescent outcomes of disclosure and concealment were more appropriate. Results supported our contention that disclosure and concealment might be considered separately. Other results indicated a positive association between adolescents' disclosure and the positive parenting dimension warmth and parental solicitation. There was a negative association between disclosure and harsh punishment in the father-son dyad. Psychological control was positively associated with concealment for both adolescent boys and girls. With a few exceptions, same gendered dyads (father-son, mother-daughter) showed the most associations between parenting dimensions and practices and disclosure or concealment.

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Sapphire fiber has been studied intensively for harsh environment sensing in the past two decades due to its supreme mechanical, physical and optical properties. It is by far the most reported and likely the best optical fiber based sensing technology for sensing applications in temperature beyond 1000°C. Several sensing schemes have been proposed and studied to date including sapphire fiber extrinsic and intrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometers, fiber Bragg gratings and long period gratings inscribed in sapphire fibers. Lacking the cladding, sapphire fiber is highly multi-moded which renders sapphire fiber based sensor fabrication much more difficult than those based on silica fibers. Among all the reported work on sapphire fiber sensing, the vast majority is for single point temperature measurement. In this work, different sensing schemes are proposed to enhance the capability of the sapphire fiber based sensing technology. For the single point sensing, a miniaturized sapphire fiber temperature sensor for embedded sensing applications was proposed and studied. The sensors are no more than 75 µm in diameter and are ideal for non-invasive embedded sensing applications. Unlike existing sapphire fiber sensors, the thin film sensors are batch-fabrication oriented and thus have a potential to permit mass production with low cost. In addition to single point sensors, multiplexed sapphire fiber sensing systems are investigated for the first time. Two multiplexed sensing solutions, named frequency-multiplexing and spatial-multiplexing, are proposed and studied to achieve multiplexed sensing based on sapphire fibers. / Ph. D.