MEMS Researchers Awarded Patent
January 31, 2005
Three Carnegie Mellon affiliated researchers have been awarded a patent for a microelectromechanical (MEMS) digital-to-acoustic transducer with error cancellation.
ECE alumnus Wayne Loeb (M.S. 2000), John Neumann, former ECE Post-Doctoral Researcher and then Project Engineer, and Kaigham (Ken) Gabriel, Professor of ECE and Robotics, co-authored the patent. Gabriel is the founder, chairman, and CTO of Akustica, Inc. Loeb works for Marvell Semiconductor, and Neumann is employed by Intel.
The patent uses a technology developed at Carnegie Mellon utilizing complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and MEMS fabrication processes to build acoustic devices on a chip, such as those inside Akustica's microphones. Because the chips can be made with the existing semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure, the results will net cheaper per-unit costs and higher yields than conventional microphones, according to Neumann.
"It will also make possible new capabilities due to automatically including electronic circuitry built into the device, and multiple mechanical structures," Neumann added. While at Carnegie Mellon, he developed a prototype CMOS-MEMS microphone, under the direction of Gabriel, who co-directs the MEMS Lab with Gary Fedder, Professor of ECE and Robotics.
Work for the patent was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through projects for the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation (MARCO), the integrated cooling of electronics using sub-circuit anisotropic tunnel etching (ICESCATE), and the application specific integrated MEMS process service (ASIMPS).
