Tiny technology leads to big development

Set in the farm country of southern Wisconsin, in the small town of Barneveld, is a company producing the kind of cutting-edge electro-optical devices that one would expect to come from Silicon Valley. The company, Quantum Devices, Inc., owes its existence, in part, to the technology transfer efforts of Henry Guckel, UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering.

We are sad to report that Professor Henry Guckel passed away as this issue of ECE NEWS went to press. He will be greatly missed.

"Without the resources of the university, a small company like ours would not be able to compete in this high-technology market," said Ron Ignatius, president of QDI.

Ron Ignatius (right), president of QDI, shows Professor Henry Guckel a new product based on technology that emerged from Guckel's lab. (27K JPG)

With his $38,000 retirement nest-egg, Ignatius started the company in 1989 to commercialize technology developed in Guckel's lab. Last year the company, which employs more than 40 people, shipped over $3 million worth of products.

Ignatius is one of many industrial partners with whom Guckel has worked during his 30-year career as a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor. With the help of those partners, Guckel has found many practical applications for the nearly 80 micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) related patents that he holds.

MEMS technology is used in sensors, which measure temperature, acceleration, pressure and more; and in actuators, devices in systems that transmit energy to control precise functions and are used in such things as inkjet nozzles and car engines.

A low light-loss optical switch that has been developed by WCAM and Quantum Devices, Inc. (22K JPG)

Many of the devices Guckel works on are smaller than a human hair. Because of their size, MEMS sensors interfere less with the environment than do larger devices. Also, several small sensors can be arranged onto an array, allowing for redundancy. MEMS actuators are advantageous because the motion they deliver is more precise than non-MEMS actuators.

While MEMS sensor technology has penetrated the marketplace, progress in the actuator market has been much slower. Because they are three-dimensional, micro-actuators are more difficult to fabricate. Guckel and his graduate students have developed a new process, which involves manufacturing with synchrotron radiation.

Using the university's synchrotron, Guckel successfully fabricated micro-actuators. However, because the machine's available photon energy was too low to expose photoresist efficiently, the process remained commercially unviable. Using the synchrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, which provides higher-energy photons, Guckel and his colleagues have reduced the cost of this technology to a much more viable $0.10 per square centimeter of material exposed.

Industrial applications for this new fabrication process include micro-actuators for inkjet nozzles and fiber-optic switches. "This technology has the potential to become a billion-dollar-a-year market," said Guckel.

Guckel says it is important to work with and exchange knowledge with industry partners. "At the university, we are good at turning our research into prototypes but we don't have the capacity to manufacture goods," said Guckel. "Working with industry ensures that the prototypes we produce can become more than just university toys."