M.Ing. / The aim of this study was to investigate integrated power electronics, and more specifically, the design and manufacture of integrated power electronic components. After evaluating and optimising the flame spray process as a manufacturing technology for integrated power electronics, it was decided to integrate the partial series resonant converter (PSRC) as a case study. Both an integrated and discrete PSRC was built after a thorough investigation of the design of parasitic inductances as resonant components. Finally, the integrated PSRC was evaluated by comparing it to the conventionally manufactured discrete PSRC. The evaluation results showed that the integrated PSRC compared favourably with the discrete PSRC, and also takes up a smaller packaging volume, mainly because of the planar shape of the integrated magnetic cores and windings. However, if efficiency is used as a measuring rod, it is clear that the technology of integrated power electronics cannot yet compete against the conventional technology of discrete power electronics, mainly because of materials as well as manufacturing problems. As soon as the manufacturing technologies and materials used for integrated power electronics become competitive with respect to conventional manufacturing technologies and materials used for discrete power electronics, integrated power electronics will become economically viable.

A new equivalent circuit of left-handed (LH) microstrip transmission line loaded with Complementary split-ring resonators (CSRRs) is presented. By adding the magnetic coupling into the equivalent circuit, the new equivalent circuit presents a more accurate cutoff frequency than the old one. The group delay of CSRRs applied with microstrip transmission line (TL) is also studied and analyzed into two cases which are passive CSRRs delay line and active CSRRs delay line. In the first case, the CSRRs TL is analyzed. The group delay can be varied and controlled via signal frequency which does not happen in a normal TL. In the active CSRRs delay line, the CSRRs loaded with TL is fixed. The diodes are added to the model between the strip and CSRRs. By observing a specific frequency at 2.03GHz after bias DC voltages from -10V to -20V, the group delay can be moved from 0.6ns to 5.6ns. A novel microstrip filter is presented by embedding CSRRs on the ground plane of microstrip filter. The filter characteristic is changed from a 300MHz narrowband to a 1GHz wideband as well as suppression the occurrence of previous higher spurious frequency at 3.9GHz. Moreover, a high rejection in the lower band and a low insertion loss of <1dB are achieved.Finally, it is shown that CSRRs applied with planar antenna can reduce the antenna size. The structure is formed by etching CSRRs on the ground side of the patch antenna. The meander line part is also added on the antenna patch to tune the operation frequency from 1.8GHz downward to 1.73GHz which can reduce the antenna size to 74% of conventional patch antennas. By using the previous antenna structure without meander line, this proposed antenna can be tuned for selecting the operation frequency, by embedding a diode connected the position between patch and ground. The results provide 350MHz tuning range with 35MHz bandwidth.

Introduction: For approximately the last eight years the Laser Section of the National Physical Research Laboratory (NPRL) has been interested in inter alia, pulsed solid-state lasers and in particular, Nd:YAG. Investigations of various resonator types were undertaken with a view to the improvement of the laser parameters such as output energy, pulse width, beam quality and sensitivity to mirror misalignment. In 1980 a Nd: YAG laser employing a rotating prism Q-switch was constructed (Preussler (1980)). It involves rotating one of the two cavity reflectors so that they are parallel for only a brief instant in time. Typically the prism must rotate at a speed of 20 000 r.p.m. to ensure a single pulse output. Such lasers suffer from the tendency to emit multiple pulses, they are very noisy and they require frequent maintenance because of the short lifetime of the bearings. A resonator employing conventional curved mirrors and an electro-optical Q-switch was constructed in 1980 (Robertson & Preussler (1982)). In 1981 an electro-optically Q-swi tched laser making use of a crossed Porro-prism resonator was investigated due to its relative insensitivity to misalignment of the reflectors compared with the conventional mirror resonator (Nortier (1981)). Improvements in terms of output power, beam divergence and beam quality can be achieved by making use of a so-called unstable resonator. Such a laser has been investigated and is reported on in this study. Chapter 2 provides some background into laser theory and operation while chapter 3 deals with the theory of the unstable resonator. Chapter 4 provides details of the experimental equipment and techniques used in the work and chapter 5 discusses the evaluation of the project and results obtained.

Freestanding low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) silicon nitride (SiN) membrane resonators are widely investigated as Nano-Electromechanical System (NEMS) for their outstandingly low mechanical dissipation and high mechanical quality (Q) factor. The high Q-factor brings better sensitivities to force, displacement, and temperature excitations. However, integrated actuation methods are not trivial to implement on this platform and are required to harness their high Q-factor in practical applications. The first goal of this research is to develop a recipe for fabricating large area low stress LPCVD SiN membrane since commercial membranes are relatively expensive and have limited flexibility in terms of geometries. Starting from 4 inches, 500 μm thick, (100) single crystal silicon wafers double-side coated with 100 nm LPCVD SiN, we successfully fabricate five different sizes (i.e., 1 mm, 1.5 mm, 3 mm, 6 mm and 12 mm) of square shape membrane chips. The developed recipe is universally applicable for any size (i.e., under 12 mm) of square shape SiN membrane from the same type of wafer. All recipe parameters are presented in this work, along with experienced challenges and their associated solutions. The second part of this work is to develop an on-chip actuation method for these resonators. We develop a new method for creating acoustic waves in the silicon substrate using metal – silicon nitride – silicon capacitors. Acoustic waves due to the voltage-dependent mechanical stress arising from charge attractions was already observed previously in silicon substrate p-n junction resonators but is observed here for the first time in a capacitively coupled metal-dielectric-semiconductor (MDS) assembly. In the MDS system, we model three main possible actuation regimes, i.e., depletion, accumulation, and thermal expansion. Both depletion and accumulation rely on electrostatic attraction forces in MDS capacitors when an AC electrical current flows through. The same current can also generate thermal expansion forces resulting from resistive dissipation in the silicon. This contribution, however, is found to be negligible. In experimental measurements on 1.5 mm membranes in high vacuum, the accumulation MDS is found to perform better than the depletion one in terms of membrane actuation amplitude. With 2 V drive voltage, the membrane achieves up to 10 nm displacement for fundamental mode (1, 1). The contribution of thermal expansion forces is found to be negligible, with resonator temperature changes smaller than 4 mK. A comparison of energy dissipation between a conventional external piezo actuation method and our approach is also presented, through which we find that both methods have comparable power consumption.

This dissertation reports, for the first time, on the electrical coupling of microelectromechanical (MEM) resonators for high order bandpass filter synthesis. Electrical coupling of MEM resonators has a strong potential for extension of the operating frequency of MEM bandpass filters into the ultra high frequency (UHF) range and provides higher tunability and design flexibility compared to the mechanical coupling approach. Various schemes of electrical coupling are presented in this dissertation. Electromechanical models of clamped-clamped beam resonators, and various types of electrically coupled filters are presented. Lower frequency prototypes of electrically coupled filters with operating frequencies in the hundreds of kHz are implemented using micromechanical single crystal silicon clamped-clamped beam resonators. Measurement results are in good agreement with the developed electrical equivalent models of the filters. It is demonstrated that the characteristics of electrically coupled filters can be widely tuned by changing the DC polarization voltages.

This thesis reports on the design and fabrication of micro-electro-mechanical (MEM) resonators on silicon that are piezoelectrically-transduced for operation in the very high frequency (VHF) range. These devices have a block-type or beam-type design, and are designed to resonate in their in-plane and out-of-plane bulk extensional modes. Two piezoelectric materials were taken into consideration, zinc-oxide (ZnO) and lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT). The resonators are fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and the metal/piezo/metal stack of layers forming the device is built and patterned on the device layer silicon via photolithography techniques, RF sputtering (for the piezo-layer) and electron-beam evaporation (for the metal layers). The designing aspect involved ANSYS simulations of the mode-shapes and estimation of frequencies, and these have correlated well with experimental results. Devices with RF sputtered ZnO were successfully fabricated and tested to give high quality factors at reasonably high frequencies. A gold ground plane was implemented to reduce the feed-through level and increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Extensive characterization of PZT was also done as a replacement for ZnO, as the former material has a much higher piezoelectric coefficient (~20X that of ZnO) and can therefore extend the operation of these MEM resonators into the UHF range. Although the basic design of the device remains the same, incorporation of PZT complicates the process flow considerably with respect to the chemistry now involved with the patterning of different layers. The frequency response for ZnO-based resonators as well as all the characterization data for PZT has been reported.

Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) micro-ring resonators (MRRs) are versatile elements in high-density integrated optics telecommunication systems. However, small inaccuracies in the fabrication process intensely deteriorate the response of SOI MRRs. By utilizing the racetrack resonator structures with strong coupling abilities, one can improve the fabrication tolerance. For the SOI racetrack resonators, the FSR is usually large. By introducing gratings into SOI racetrack resonators, the mutual mode coupling between the clockwise and counterclockwise modes can be induced and result in the resonance splitting. The grating-assisted SOI racetrack resonators can increase the operation wavelength and open up the possibility to overcome this limitation. In this thesis, we first use the 2-D FDTD method with the effective index method (EIM) to obtain the transmission spectra of the SOI racetrack resonators. The transmission spectra are then fitted by using the time-domain coupled mode theory (CMT) to obtain the quality factor and optical parameters of the SOI racetrack resonators. Next, we demonstrate the characteristics of mode splitting resulted from the mutual mode coupling between the clockwise and counterclockwise modes in the grating-assisted racetrack resonators by utilizing both the CMT and the 2-D FDTD method with the EIM. By tuning the grating configurations, such as the length or the structure of sidewall gratings, one can obtain the desired transmission spectrum of the grating-assisted racetrack resonators. Finally, we numerically investigate the temperature-dependent spectral characterics of the grating-assisted SOI racetrack resonator by taking the thermal-optic responce of the SOI materials into account. The thermal sensitivity of this device is 95.38 pm/¢XC, and the calculted properties can help the further designs based on the grating-assisted SOI racetrack resonators.

xviii, 213 p. / A print copy of this title is available through the UO Libraries under the call number: SCIENCE QC476.5 .F67 2006 / We investigate models describing two classes of microresonators: those having the shape of a dome, and those having an oval (deformed circle or sphere) shape. We examine the effects of dielectric interfaces in these structures. For the dome cavity, we derive efficient numerical methods for finding exact electromagnetic resonances. In the dome consisting of a concave conductor and a planar, dielectric Bragg mirror, we discover a phenomenon which we call paraxial mode mixing (PMM) or classical spin-orbit coupling. PMM is the sensitive selection of the true electromagnetic modes. The true modes are generally mixtures of pairs of vectorial Laguerre-Gauss modes. While each member of an LG pair possesses definite orbital angular momentum and spin (polarization), the mixed modes do not, and exhibit rich, non-uniform polarization patterns. The mixing is governed by an orthogonal transformation specified by the mixing angle (MA). The differences in reflection phases of a Bragg mirror at electric s and p polarization can be characterized in the paraxial regime by a wavelength-dependent quantity εs - εp. The MA is primarily determined by this quantity and varies with an apparent arctangent dependence, concomitant with an anticrossing of the maximally mixed modes. The MA is zero order in quantities that are small in the paraxial limit, suggesting an effective two-state degenerate perturbation theory. No known effective Hamiltonian and/or electromagnetic perturbation theory exists for this singular, vectorial, mixed boundary problem. We develop a preliminary formulation which partially reproduces the quantitative mixing behavior. Observation of PMM will require both small cavities and highly reflective mirrors. Uses include optical tweezers and classical and quantum information. For oval dielectric resonators, we develop reduced models for describing whispering gallery modes by utilizing sequential tunneling, the Goos-H¨anchen (GH) effect, and the generalized Born-Oppenheimer (adiabatic) approximation (BOA). While the GH effect is found to be incompatible with sequential tunneling, the BOA method is found to be a useful connection between ray optics and the exact wave solution. The GH effect is also shown to nicely explain a new class of stable V-shaped dome cavity modes. / Adviser: Dr. Jens Noeckel.

Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) have drawn considerable attention towards several sensing applications such as force, spin, charge and mass. These devices due to their smaller size, operate at very high frequencies (MHz - GHz) and have very high quality factors (102 -105). However, the early onset of nonlinearity limits the linear dynamic range of these devices. In this work we investigate the nonlinearities and their effect on the performance of graphene based NEMS. Electromechanical devices based on 2D materials are extremely sensitive to strain. We studied the effect of strain on the performance of single layer Graphene NEMS and show how the strain in Graphene NEMS can be tuned to increase the range of linear operation. Electromechanical properties of the doubly clamped graphene resonators deviates from the flat rectangular plate as the former possesses geometrical imperfections which are sometimes orders of magnitude larger than the thickness of the resonator. Due to these imperfections we report an initial softening behavior, turning to strong hardening nonlinearity for larger vibration amplitude in the back-bone curve. We have also studied the frequency stability of graphene resonators. Frequency stability analysis indicates departure from the nominal frequency of the resonator with time. We have used Allan Variance as a tool to characterize the frequency stability of the device. Frequency stability of graphene resonator is studied in an open loop configuration as a function of temperature and bias voltage. The thesis concludes with a remark on the future work that can be carried out based on the present studies.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第18588号 / 工博第3949号 / 新制||工||1607(附属図書館) / 31488 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科マイクロエンジニアリング専攻 / (主査)教授 田畑 修, 教授 西脇 眞二, 准教授 土屋 智由, 教授 引原 隆士 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM