Publications related to Tunable plasmonic nanostructures

Nanomechanical resonators with low dissipation for quantum optomechanics

Fields of technology as diverse as microwave filter construction, characterization of material interfaces with atomic precision, and detection of gravitational waves from astronomical sources employ mechanical resonators at their core. The utility of mecha ...

EPFL2023

Fabrication of zipping electrostatic actuators incorporating inkjet-printed layers

Samuel Rosset, Herbert Shea, Giulio Grasso

Zipping electrostatic actuators operate by bending flexible electrodes using electrostatic forces. This principle allows the use of a wide range of dielectric and conductive materials. Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques can be used to fabricate these a ...

SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING2021

Design and control of a prototype structure that adapts to loading through large shape changes

Ian Smith, Arka Prabhata Reksowardojo, Gennaro Senatore, Apoorv Srivastava

This paper reports on experimental testing that was carried out on a prototype adaptive structure designed to counteract the effect of loading through controlled large shape changes. The prototype is 6.6 m truss equipped with 12 linear actuators which has ...

ELSEVIER2020

Autonomous oil flow generated by self-oscillating polymer gels

Vito Cacucciolo

The previously reported gel and polymer actuators require external inputs, such as batteries, circuits, electronic circuits, etc., compared with autonomous motions produced by the living organisms. To realize the spontaneous motions, here, we propose to in ...

Nature Research2020

Design of structures that adapt to loads through large shape changes

Ian Smith, Arka Prabhata Reksowardojo, Gennaro Senatore

Adaptive structures can modify their geometry and internal forces through sensing and mechanical actuation in order to maintain optimal performance under changing actions. Previous work has shown that well-conceived adaptive design strategies achieve subst ...

2020

Shape changes through geometric nonlinear control as a strategy for structural adaptation

Arka Prabhata Reksowardojo

Adaptive structures modify their geometry and internal forces through sensing and mechanical actuation in order to maintain optimal performance under changing actions. Previous work has shown that well-conceived adaptive design strategies achieve substanti ...

EPFL2020

Minimum energy adaptive structures – All-In-One problem formulation

Gennaro Senatore, Yafeng Wang

This paper presents a new All-In-One (AIO) implementation of an existing formulation to design adaptive structures through Total Energy Optimization (TEO). The method implemented in previous work is a nested optimization process, here named TEO-Nested. Num ...

2020

Monolithic piezoelectric control of soliton microcombs

Rui Ning Wang, Tobias Kippenberg, Erwan Guillaume Albert Lucas, Junqiu Liu, Miles Henry Anderson, Arslan Sajid Raja, Wenle Weng, Jijun He, Tianyi Liu

High-speed actuation of laser frequency(1)is critical in applications using lasers and frequency combs(2,3), and is a prerequisite for phase locking, frequency stabilization and stability transfer among optical carriers. For example, high-bandwidth feedbac ...

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP2020

Drastic breakdown field reduction in multilayer DEA

Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Jonathan André Jean-Marie Chavanne, Morgan Almanza

The electrical properties such as the electrical breakdown and the permittivity but also the softness of the elastomer are key factors for the performance of DEA. In order to have the best use of elastomer films, single-layer actuators have been deeply stu ...

2019

Structures that adapt to loads through large shape changes: design and optimization

Ian Smith, Arka Prabhata Reksowardojo, Gennaro Senatore

The construction industry is a major contributor to the consumption of mined material resources and to the global energy demand. It is thus important to consider energy and material efficiency criteria for the design of civil structures. Through sensing an ...

Taylor & Francis2019

A vibration control strategy using variable stiffness joints

Gennaro Senatore

Adaptive joints are structural joints made of materials with enhanced transduction properties that can vary their stiffness via solid-state actuation (e.g. thermal, mechanical). In this work, stiffness tuning is used to switch the joint between a ‘locked’ ...

2018

Port: A Piezoelectric Optical Resonance Tuner

Michail Zervas, Tobias Kippenberg

This abstract presents an aluminum nitride (AlN) piezoelectric actuator for tuning optical resonance modes of silicon nitride photonic resonators. The AlN actuator is fabricated on top of a thick silicon dioxide cladding that encapsulates the nitride reson ...

IEEE2018

3D monolithic dielectrophoretic actuators and resonators written by femtosecond laser

Tao Yang

The last few decades have witnessed exciting advances in micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS) including revolutionary development of fabrication processes and an ever increasing expansion of their domain of applications. In parallel, femtosecond l ...

EPFL2017

Progress on femtosecond laser-based system-materials: three-dimensional monolithic electrostatic micro-actuator for optomechanics

Yves Bellouard, Tao Yang

Femtosecond laser-dielectric interaction in a three-dimensional (3D) manner defines a capable platform for integrated 3D micro-devices fabricated out of a single piece of system-material. Here, we add a new function to femtosecond laser-based single monoli ...

Spie-Int Soc Optical Engineering2016

Auxetic Metamaterial Simplifies Soft Robot Design

Tian Qiu, Peer Fischer

Soft materials are being adopted in robotics in order to facilitate biomedical applications and in order to achieve simpler and more capable robots. One route to simplification is to design the robot's body using 'smart materials' that carry the burden of ...

Ieee2016

Electrothermal actuation of vanadium dioxide for tunable capacitors and microwave filters with integrated microheaters

Mihai Adrian Ionescu, Andreas Schueler, Montserrat Fernandez-Bolanos Badia, Antonio Paone, Clara-Fausta Moldovan, Wolfgang Amadeus Vitale, Luca Petit

We report the fabrication, modeling and characterization of novel microwave tunable capacitors based on the metal-insulator transition (MIT) of Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) as a future replacement solution for microelectromechanical capacitive switches. We prese ...

Elsevier Science Sa2016

Monolithic transparent 3D dielectrophoretic micro-actuator fabricated by femtosecond laser

Yves Bellouard, Tao Yang

We demonstrate a three-dimensional (3D) monolithic micro-actuator fabricated by non-ablative femtosecond laser micromachining and subsequent chemical etching. The actuating principle is based on dielectrophoresis. An analytical modeling of this actuation s ...

Institute of Physics2015

Advanced sol-gel processing of PZT thin films for piezoelectric MEMS structures

Nachiappan Chidambaram

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology is revolutionizing industrial and consumer products by replacing bulky devices by miniaturized versions that are suitable for portable applications as for instance in mobile phones. Besides small size, the ...

EPFL2014

Integrated long-range thermal bimorph actuators for parallelizable bio-AFM applications

Jürgen Brugger, Jonas Gustav Henriksson, Rosario Maurizio Gullo

AFM-based cell force spectroscopy is an emerging research method that already has enhanced our understanding of the structural changes that take place in a cell as it becomes cancerous. However, the method is limited as it is not time-efficient in its curr ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2013

Optical Modulators Based on Microfabricated Tilting Flaps Operating at low Actuation Voltages

Fabio Jutzi

In this thesis the concept, modelling, design, fabrication process and characterization of novel optical modulators are presented. The devices consist of flaps exhibiting a large tilt with electrostatic actuation at low voltages. The applications comprise, ...

EPFL2012