Matching Items (29)
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- All Subjects: Biomedical Engineering
- All Subjects: Semiconductors
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Nikkhah, Mehdi
- Creators: Goryll, Michael
- Creators: Kodibagkar, Vikram
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
The past two decades have been monumental in the advancement of microchips designed for a diverse range of medical applications and bio-analysis. Owing to the remarkable progress in micro-fabrication technology, complex chemical and electro-mechanical features can now be integrated into chip-scale devices for use in biosensing and physiological measurements. Some of these devices have made enormous contributions in the study of complex biochemical processes occurring at the molecular and cellular levels while others overcame the challenges of replicating various functions of human organs as implant systems. This thesis presents test data and analysis of two such systems. First, an ISFET based pH sensor is characterized for its performance in a continuous pH monitoring application. Many of the basic properties of ISFETs including I-V characteristics, pH sensitivity and more importantly, its long term drift behavior have been investigated. A new theory based on frequent switching of electric field across the gate oxide to decrease the rate of current drift has been successfully implemented with the help of an automated data acquisition and switching system. The system was further tested for a range of duty cycles in order to accurately determine the minimum length of time required to fully reset the drift. Second, a microfluidic based vestibular implant system was tested for its underlying characteristics as a light sensor. A computer controlled tilt platform was then implemented to further test its sensitivity to inclinations and thus it‟s more important role as a tilt sensor. The sensor operates through means of optoelectronics and relies on the signals generated from photodiode arrays as a result of light being incident on them. ISFET results show a significant drop in the overall drift and good linear characteristics. The drift was seen to reset at less than an hour. The photodiodes show ideal I-V comparison between photoconductive and photovoltaic modes of operation with maximum responsivity at 400nm and a shunt resistance of 394 MΩ. Additionally, post-processing of the tilt sensor to incorporate the sensing fluids is outlined. Based on several test and fabrication results, a possible method of sealing the open cavity of the chip using a UV curable epoxy has been discussed.
ContributorsMamun, Samiha (Author) / Christen, Jennifer Blain (Thesis advisor) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Yu, Hongyu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Carrier lifetime is one of the few parameters which can give information about the low defect densities in today's semiconductors. In principle there is no lower limit to the defect density determined by lifetime measurements. No other technique can easily detect defect densities as low as 10-9 - 10-10 cm-3 in a simple, contactless room temperature measurement. However in practice, recombination lifetime τr measurements such as photoconductance decay (PCD) and surface photovoltage (SPV) that are widely used for characterization of bulk wafers face serious limitations when applied to thin epitaxial layers, where the layer thickness is smaller than the minority carrier diffusion length Ln. Other methods such as microwave photoconductance decay (µ-PCD), photoluminescence (PL), and frequency-dependent SPV, where the generated excess carriers are confined to the epitaxial layer width by using short excitation wavelengths, require complicated configuration and extensive surface passivation processes that make them time-consuming and not suitable for process screening purposes. Generation lifetime τg, typically measured with pulsed MOS capacitors (MOS-C) as test structures, has been shown to be an eminently suitable technique for characterization of thin epitaxial layers. It is for these reasons that the IC community, largely concerned with unipolar MOS devices, uses lifetime measurements as a "process cleanliness monitor." However when dealing with ultraclean epitaxial wafers, the classic MOS-C technique measures an effective generation lifetime τg eff which is dominated by the surface generation and hence cannot be used for screening impurity densities. I have developed a modified pulsed MOS technique for measuring generation lifetime in ultraclean thin p/p+ epitaxial layers which can be used to detect metallic impurities with densities as low as 10-10 cm-3. The widely used classic version has been shown to be unable to effectively detect such low impurity densities due to the domination of surface generation; whereas, the modified version can be used suitably as a metallic impurity density monitoring tool for such cases.
ContributorsElhami Khorasani, Arash (Author) / Alford, Terry (Thesis advisor) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Bertoni, Mariana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Magnetic Resonance Imaging using spiral trajectories has many advantages in speed, efficiency in data-acquistion and robustness to motion and flow related artifacts. The increase in sampling speed, however, requires high performance of the gradient system. Hardware inaccuracies from system delays and eddy currents can cause spatial and temporal distortions in the encoding gradient waveforms. This causes sampling discrepancies between the actual and the ideal k-space trajectory. Reconstruction assuming an ideal trajectory can result in shading and blurring artifacts in spiral images. Current methods to estimate such hardware errors require many modifications to the pulse sequence, phantom measurements or specialized hardware. This work presents a new method to estimate time-varying system delays for spiral-based trajectories. It requires a minor modification of a conventional stack-of-spirals sequence and analyzes data collected on three orthogonal cylinders. The method is fast, robust to off-resonance effects, requires no phantom measurements or specialized hardware and estimate variable system delays for the three gradient channels over the data-sampling period. The initial results are presented for acquired phantom and in-vivo data, which show a substantial reduction in the artifacts and improvement in the image quality.
ContributorsBhavsar, Payal (Author) / Pipe, James G (Thesis advisor) / Frakes, David (Committee member) / Kodibagkar, Vikram (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Photodetectors in the 1.7 to 4.0 μm range are being commercially developed on InP substrates to meet the needs of longer wavelength applications such as thermal and medical sensing. Currently, these devices utilize high indium content metamorphic Ga1-xInxAs (x > 0.53) layers to extend the wavelength range beyond the 1.7 μm achievable using lattice matched GaInAs. The large lattice mismatch required to reach the extended wavelengths results in photodetector materials that contain a large number of misfit dislocations. The low quality of these materials results in a large nonradiative Shockley Read Hall generation/recombination rate that is manifested as an undesirable large thermal noise level in these photodetectors. This work focuses on utilizing the different band structure engineering methods to design more efficient devices on InP substrates. One prospective way to improve photodetector performance at the extended wavelengths is to utilize lattice matched GaInAs/GaAsSb structures that have a type-II band alignment, where the ground state transition energy of the superlattice is smaller than the bandgap of either constituent material. Over the extended wavelength range of 2 to 3 μm this superlattice structure has an optimal period thickness of 3.4 to 5.2 nm and a wavefunction overlap of 0.8 to 0.4, respectively. In using a type-II superlattice to extend the cutoff wavelength there is a tradeoff between the wavelength reached and the electron-hole wavefunction overlap realized, and hence absorption coefficient achieved. This tradeoff and the subsequent reduction in performance can be overcome by two methods: adding bismuth to this type-II material system; applying strain on both layers in the system to attain strain-balanced condition. These allow the valance band alignment and hence the wavefunction overlap to be tuned independently of the wavelength cutoff. Adding 3% bismuth to the GaInAs constituent material, the resulting lattice matched Ga0.516In0.484As0.970Bi0.030/GaAs0.511Sb0.489superlattice realizes a 50% larger absorption coefficient. While as, similar results can be achieved with strain-balanced condition with strain limited to 1.9% on either layer. The optimal design rules derived from the different possibilities make it feasible to extract superlattice period thickness with the best absorption coefficient for any cutoff wavelength in the range.
ContributorsSharma, Ankur R (Author) / Johnson, Shane (Thesis advisor) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Roedel, Ronald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays and X-rays, are becoming more widely used. These high-energy forms of electromagnetic radiation are present in nuclear energy, astrophysics, and the medical field. As more and more people have the opportunity to be exposed to ionizing radiation, the necessity for coming up with simple and quick methods of radiation detection is increasing. In this work, two systems were explored for their ability to simply detect ionizing radiation. Gold nanoparticles were formed via radiolysis of water in the presence of Elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) and also in the presence of cationic polymers. Gold nanoparticle formation is an indicator of the presence of radiation. The system with ELP was split into two subsystems: those samples including isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and acetone, and those without IPA and acetone. The samples were exposed to certain radiation doses and gold nanoparticles were formed. Gold nanoparticle formation was deemed to have occurred when the sample changed color from light yellow to a red or purple color. Nanoparticle formation was also checked by absorbance measurements. In the cationic polymer system, gold nanoparticles were also formed after exposing the experimental system to certain radiation doses. Unique to the polymer system was the ability of some of the cationic polymers to form gold nanoparticles without the samples being irradiated. Future work to be done on this project is further characterization of the gold nanoparticles formed by both systems.
ContributorsWalker, Candace (Author) / Rege, Kaushal (Thesis advisor) / Chang, John (Committee member) / Kodibagkar, Vikram (Committee member) / Potta, Thrimoorthy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Electronic devices are gaining an increasing market share in the medical field. Medical devices are becoming more sophisticated, and encompassing more applications. Unlike consumer electronics, medical devices have far more limitations when it comes to area, power and most importantly reliability. The medical devices industry has recently seen the advantages of using Flash memory instead of Read Only Memory (ROM) for firmware storage, and in some cases to replace Electrically Programmable Read Only Memories (EEPROMs) in medical devices for frequent data storage. There are direct advantages to using Flash memory instead of Read Only Memory, most importantly the fact that firmware can be rewritten along the development cycle and in the field. However, Flash technology requires high voltage circuitry that makes it harder to integrate into low power devices. There have been a lot of advances in Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) technologies, and many Flash rivals are starting to gain attention. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate these new technologies against Flash to determine the feasibility as well as the advantages of each technology. The focus is on embedded memory in a medical device micro-controller and application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). A behavioral model of a Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC) was used to simulate the behavior and determine the advantages of using PMC technology versus flash. When compared to flash test data, PMC based embedded memory showed a reduction in power consumption by many orders of magnitude. Analysis showed that an approximated 20% device longevity increase can be achieved by using embedded PMC technology.
ContributorsHag, Eslam E (Author) / Kozicki, Michael N (Thesis advisor) / Schroder, Dieter K. (Committee member) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
Encapsulation is a promising technology to deliver cell-based therapies to patients safely and with reduced need for immunosuppression. Macroencapsulation devices are advantageous due to their ease of retrieval, and thus enhanced safety profile, relative to microencapsulation techniques. A major challenge in macroencapsulation device design is ensuring sufficient oxygen transport to encapsulated cells, requiring high surface area-to-volume device geometries. In this work, a hydrogel injection molding biofabrication method was modified to design and generate complex three-dimensional macroencapsulation devices that have greater complexity in the z-axis. The rheological properties of diverse hydrogels were evaluated and used to perform computational flow modeling within injection mold devices to evaluate pressure regimes suitable for cell viability. 3D printed device designs were evaluated for the reproducibility of hydrogel filling and extraction. This work demonstrated that injection molding biofabrication to construct complex three-dimensional geometries is feasible in pressure regimes consistent with preserving cell viability. Future work will evaluate encapsulated cell viability after injection molding.
ContributorsBrowning, Blake (Author) / Weaver, Jessica D (Thesis advisor) / Vernon, Brent (Committee member) / Nikkhah, Mehdi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Portable health diagnostic systems seek to perform medical grade diagnostics in non-ideal environments. This work details a robust fault tolerant portable health diagnostic design implemented in hardware, firmware and software for the detectionof HPV in low-income countries. The device under device under test (DUT) is a fluorescence based lateral flow assay (LFA) point-of-care (POC) device. This work’s contributions are: firmware and software development, calibration routine implementation, device performance characterization and a proposed method of in-software fault detection. Firmware was refactored from the original implementation of the POC fluorescence reader to expose an application programming interface (API) via USB. Companion software available for desktop environments (Windows, Mac and Linux) was created to interface with this firmware API and conduct macro level routines to request and receive fluorescence data while presenting a user-friendly interface to clinical technicians. Lastly, an environmental chamber was constructed to conduct sequential diagnostic reads in order to observe sensor drift and other deviations that might present themselves in real-world usage. The results from these evaluations show a standard deviation of less than 1% in fluorescence readings in nominal temperature environments (approx. 25C) suggesting that this system will have a favorable signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio in such a setting. In non-ideal over heated environments (≥38C), the evaluation results showed performance degradation with standard deviations as large as 15%.
ContributorsLue Sang, Christopher David (Author) / Blain Christen, Jennifer M (Thesis advisor) / Ozev, Sule (Committee member) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Raupp, Gregory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Evolving knowledge about the tumor microenvironment (TME) is driving innovation in designing novel therapies against hard-to-treat breast cancer. Addressing the immune elements within the tumor microenvironment (TME) has emerged as a highly encouraging strategy for treating cancer. Although current immunotherapies have made advancements in reinstating the body's ability to fight tumors, the search for effective cancer treatments to combat tumor evasion remains a formidable challenge. In line with this objective, there is a pressing need to better understand the complex tumor-immune dynamics and crosstalk within the TME. To evaluate the cancer-immune interaction, this study aimed at investigating the crosstalk between naïve macrophages and cytotoxic T cells in driving tumor progression using an organotypic 3D ex vivo tumor on-a-chip model. The presented microfluidic platform consists of two distinct regions namely: The tumor region and the stroma region separated by trapezoidal microposts to ensure interconnectivity between regions thereby incorporating high spatial organization. In the established triculture platform, the complex Tumor Immune Microenvironment was successfully recapitulated by incorporating naïve macrophage and T cells within an appropriate 3D matrix. Through invasion and morphometric analyses, definitive outcomes were obtained that underscore the significant contribution of macrophages in facilitating tumor progression. Furthermore, the inclusion of T cells led to a notable decrease in the migratory speed of cancer cells and macrophages, underscoring the reciprocal communication between these two immune cell populations in the regulation of tumor advancement. Overall, this study highlights the complexity of TME and underscores the critical role of immune cells in regulating cancer progression.
ContributorsManoharan, Twinkle Jina Minette (Author) / Nikkhah, Mehdi (Thesis advisor) / Acharya, Abhinav P (Committee member) / Wang, Shaopeng (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
The blood-brain-barrier (BBB) is a significant obstacle for treating many neurological disorders. Bubble-assisted focused ultrasound (BAFUS) medicated BBB disruption is a promising technology that enables the delivery of large drug doses at targeted locations across the BBB. However, the current lack of an in vitro model of this process hinders the full understanding of BAFUS BBB disruption for better translation into clinics. In this work, a US-transparent organ-on-chip device has been fabricated that can be critical for the in vitro modeling of the BAFUS BBB disruption. The transparency of the device window to focused ultrasound (FUS) was calculated theoretically and demonstrated by experiments. Nanobubbles were fabricated, characterized by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM), and showed bubble cavitation under FUS. Human colorectal adenocarcinoma (Caco-2) cells were used to form a good cellular barrier for BAFUS barrier disruption, as suggested by the measured permeability and transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER). Finally, barrier disruption and recovery were observed in BAFUS disrupted US-transparent organ-on-chips with Caco-2 barriers, showing great promise of the platform for future modeling BAFUS BBB disruption in vitro.
ContributorsAkkad, Adam Rifat (Author) / Gu, Jian (Thesis advisor) / Nikkhah, Mehdi (Thesis advisor) / Belohlavek, Marek (Committee member) / Wang, Xiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022