Robert E. Higashi

Environmentally rugged, wide dynamic range microstructure airflow sensor

A silicon microstructure airflow sensor has been developed with a wide dynamic operating range and ruggedness for long-life operation in harsh environments. Platinum metallization is used for the airflow sensor because of its resistance to corrosion. Processing of thin-film platinum has been developed to achieve a high, stable value of the platinum temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR). The sensor design can be adjusted for sensitivity or range depending upon the application requirements. The airflow sensors were subjected to accelerated life testing to demonstrate the ability to maintain electrical stability and physical integrity in harsh environments. The life testing consisted of operation of the sensors with airflow in overpowered, high-temperature, and high-humidity conditions for extended periods. The sensors were also subjected to extended periods of time during which dust particles were added to the flow to simulate a dusty environment. The sensors performed well throughout the accelerated life testing with little change in output characteristics.<<ETX>>

YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7/ superconductor microbolometer arrays fabricated by silicon micromachining

Linear arrays of YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7/ transition edge microbolometers have been fabricated on silicon substrates using silicon micromachining to produce microbolometer structures with good thermal isolation. These bolometers, which are 85 mu m*115 mu m*1 mu m, have a noise equivalent power (NEP) of 9*10/sup -13/ W/Hz/sup 1/2/. (neglecting contact noise) and a thermal time constant of 24 ms. With contact noise, the NEP is 9*10/sup -12/ W/Hz/sup 1/2/. This performance indicates that a 2-D staring focal plane array of superconductor microbolometers could have a performance comparable to that of HgCdTe staring arrays without further improvements in the sharpness of the superconducting transition or reductions in the YBa/sub 2/Cu/sub 3/O/sub 7/ electrical noise. The use of silicon processing technology to fabricate the superconductor microbolometers results in a significant cost advantage over HgCdTe, and there is no long wavelength cutoff dependence in the sensitivity of a superconductor microbolometer.<<ETX>>

Recent progress in large dynamic resistor arrays

An addressable mosaic array of resistively heated microbridges offers the potential to project accurate dynamic infrared (IR) imagery. The main purpose of this imagery is to be used in the evaluation of IR instruments from seekers to FLIRs. With the growing development of lower cost uncooled IR imagers, scene projectors also offer the potential for dynamic testing of these new instruments. In past years we have described developments in a variety of IR projectors systems designed for different purposes. In this paper we will describe recent developments in these technologies aimed at improving or understanding temporal and radiative performance.

Ball-grid array architecture for microfabricated ion traps

State-of-the-art microfabricated ion traps for quantum information research are approaching nearly one hundred control electrodes. We report here on the development and testing of a new architecture for microfabricated ion traps, built around ball-grid array (BGA) connections, that is suitable for increasingly complex trap designs. In the BGA trap, through-substrate vias bring electrical signals from the back side of the trap die to the surface trap structure on the top side. Gold-ball bump bonds connect the back side of the trap die to an interposer for signal routing from the carrier. Trench capacitors fabricated into the trap die replace area-intensive surface or edge capacitors. Wirebonds in the BGA architecture are moved to the interposer. These last two features allow the trap die to be reduced to only the area required to produce trapping fields. The smaller trap dimensions allow tight focusing of an addressing laser beam for fast single-qubit rotations. Performance of the BGA trap as characterized with

A broad range absolute pressure microsensor

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Ultra-low-power scene projector for targets against space backgrounds

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Large-area infrared microemitter arrays for dynamic scene projection

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512×512 Infrared cryogenic scene projector arrays

ions is comparable to previous surface-electrode traps in terms of ion heating rate, mode frequency stability, and storage lifetime. We demonstrate two-qubit entanglement operations with

Uncooled MEMS-based detector arrays for THz imaging applications

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512x512 WISP (wideband infrared scene projector) arrays

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