Dana Weinstein, assistant professor in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and principal investigator with the Microsystems Technology Laboratories, MTL, has been selected to receive the National Science Foundation Early Career Award, effective Feb. 1, 2012. The award will fund a five year program that will both explore multi-GHz MEMS resonators using electromechanical transduction with integrated circuit (IC) transistors and incorporate a cohesive education and outreach plan for students from K-12 through undergraduate level to increase awareness and understanding of MEMS and Electrical Engineering.
Fundamental innovation in resonator design using the active transduction developed in Prof. Weinstein's lab will enable scaled, monolithically integrated RF MEMS devices with performance rivaling their off-chip counterparts at previously unattainable frequencies. Active transduction mechanisms in MEMS resonators leveraging IC technology for high transducer efficiency with high-gain, high-fT transistors will be investigated. Actively transduced resonators will be implemented in a Single Transistor Radio (STaR) and RF front-end filters. These system demonstrations require innovation in circuit design to harness the benefits of active transducers in resonators with entirely new topologies.
The HybridMEMS Lab led by Weinstein focuses on the development of hybrid MEMS-IC devices for low-power wireless communication, microprocessor clocking, and sensor applications. In particular, they are working to harness the benefits of acoustic vibrations to enhance the performance of next-generation electronic devices. The lab is also pursuing integration of such hybrid devices into CMOS-based systems, including low-power, narrow-bandwidth low noise amplifiers for transceivers and low phase-noise oscillator arrays for clock generation and temperature sensing in microprocessors.