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This paper reports a robust fabrication process to integrate carbon nanotubes (CNTs) film into a micro electromechanical systems actuator by the design and fabrication of a silicon micromirror supported by CNTs hinges. Vertically aligned single wall carbon nanotubes forest film was synthesized by water-assisted chemical vapor deposition. CNTs film was then condensed, manually maneuvered and patterned by EB lithography to form a flexible hinge of a mirror. The mirror is actuated by a electrostatic angular vertical comb actuator and the performance had been characterized. The mirror could be driven by a low voltage with a rotate angle of 1.5° and a response frequency of 500 Hz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present the simulation and fabrication of the gas gyroscope. The gas flow inside the hermetically packed sensor is simulated by utilizing 3-D transient compressible flow analysis. The pump working principle and the effect of the Coriolis acceleration on the laminar jet are validated by both analytical formulas and experiments. The sensor utilizes a new sensing element consisting of a thermistor heated by an interior heater, which is independently power-supplied. The sensor performance can be adjusted by the applied voltage on the heater. Both heater and thermistor are optimized in terms of thermal stress. The effect of thermal stress in a p-type silicon thermistor reduces the performance of sensor by 9.5%. The sensor has been calibrated and the role of the heater is verified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper reports the first study on the backpressure of a valveless electromagnetic micropump using the volume-of-fluid (VOF) technique and open-source code OpenFOAM. The micropump consists of a vibrating diaphragm and fluidic microchannel connected to inlet and outlet tubes. The imbalance in fluid resistance of the fluidic microchannel during a vibration cycle of the diaphragm creates backpressure in the pump, which in turn produces a difference in water level between the inlet and outlet tubes. In this study, VOF was used in a transient simulation to obtain this difference in water level and then the backpressure. The obtained backpressure showed a slight discrepancy with the experimental data. The discrepancy was probably due to the difference in the wall surface quality of the fluidic microchannel between the simulation model and experimental device. These results are useful for analytical and numerical research on these types of micropumps and can easily be applied in an open-source code simulator with almost zero cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]