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| Patents granted | |
Faculty and staff in the College of Engineering are among the leaders in creating new intellectual property at UW-Madison. These are among the latest patents they have received, via the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, for their advances
Silicon-based, single electron transistor
Because today's transistors transfer millions of electrons at a time, they generate a large amount of heat when packed together on semiconductor chips. As a result, chips can only contain a set number of conventional transistors. Invented by Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Professor Robert Blick and Dominik Scheible, the single electron transistor (SET), which consists of a source, drain and island, is feasible for commercial applications such as switches and signal filters. Among its benefits, the SET works at room temperature, can be formed to have a very small footprint, and is well suited for incorporation into circuit elements, rectifiers, transistors, and gas and radiation sensors.
Machining of lithium niobate by laser fracturing
Lithium niobate is used in fabrication of a variety of optical and electro-optic devices and widely used to produce the electronic filters in televisions or cell phones. Currently a mechanical sawing method dices the wafers into chips — a method that is slow, contaminant-laden and dependent on rectangular shapes. With a commercially available laser and a method invented by Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Leon McCaughan, researchers now can rapidly dice lithium niobate wafers into a variety of shapes, including those with curves, as well as ablate features onto the wafer surface.
Method for bonding stacks of silicon layers by electromagnetic induction heating
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor John Booske and colleagues Keith Thompson Yogesh Gianchandani and Reid Cooper have learned that electromagnetic induction heating can be used to generate an ohmic silicon response that directly heats silicon during the silicon-silicon bonding process. Unlike the current bonding process, which is conducted inside large furnaces with long ramp-up times, slow throughput rates, large power consumption and a significant manufacturing footprint, the new technique enables manufacturers to stack silicon wafers, generate an electromagnetic field, and heat them to a predetermined temperature. The method creates uniform strong silicon-silicon bonds in under five minutes.
Laboratory asphalt stability test
Using a substantially scaled-down production asphalt storage tank, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Hussain Bahia and Huachun Zhai can analyze modified asphalt binder under conditions that better approximate those of the asphalt binder before it is applied. With their new method, the two can subject asphalt samples to a variety of tests, including separation, degradation, and external and internal heating with and without mixing.
Low-temperature process to produce hydrocarbons from oxygenated substrates, including sugars
This new invention provides an environmentally benign method of producing hydrocarbons from oxygenated compounds ultimately derived from fully renewable plant biomass. While hydrocarbon feedstocks now are extracted from petroleum reserves in the ground and combusted to generate energy, they are non-renewable and their combustion may contribute to global warming. Randy Cortright and Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor James Dumesic's method reacts water and a water-soluble oxygenated compound in the presence of a metal-containing catalyst — a process that minimizes production of hazardous carbon monoxide. The reaction can take place in either the vapor phase or in the condensed liquid phase.
Improved pressure plate extractor for characterizing soils
Essential parameters for characterizing the hydraulic and mechanical behavior of soils, soil water characteristic curve (SWCC) tests can take from two weeks to several months to run. But current pressure chambers tend to leak air, invalidating research results and wasting researchers' time. Xiaodong Wang and Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Craig Benson have developed a new leak-free design that incorporates a gasket that sits in a channel around the drain plate perimeter, rather than on top of the plate. When they clamp the chamber lid onto the gasket, the gasket expands laterally to tightly engage the drain plate, the side walls of the chamber lid, and the pressure chamber base.
3-D phase contrast imaging using interleaved projection data
A new technology will enable physicians to capture three-dimensional images of blood vessels in the same amount of time as currently used time-of-flight methods, which exploit the difference in magnetic resonance signal saturation between flowing blood and stationary tissues. Developed by Biomedical Engineering, Medical Physics, and Radiology Professor Charles Mistretta, the noninvasive technique, SUPERVENC (or spectral imaging with undersampled projections and interleaved velocity encoding), enables physicians to examine all vessels in an image volume retrospectively and provides quantitative information on blood flow velocity during magnetic resonance angiography.
Method for caching media files to reduce delivery cost
Several techniques are available to transmit online media, including multicast, which allows several users to view a single stream sent by the server. Techniques such as multicast stream merging enable later users to catch up and view a program that began earlier. Industrial and Systems Engineering and Computer Sciences Professors Mary Vernon and Michael Ferris, and Derek Eager have developed a better way to allocate data in multicast stream merging, reducing data storage costs and improving service to clients.
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: 03-Feb-2006
Date created: 03-Feb-2006
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