A spectral detection method has been developed for achieving spectral resolution beyond the diffraction limit of the spectrograph providing a vast potential improvement in spectral resolution compared to the current standard. Previous attempts at high resolution spectrophometers used high quality optics and highly grooved diffraction grating to spread light as much as possible; however, narrowing the effective spectral spread function and spectral range of the instrument. Fourier transform (FT) spectrometers equipped with exotic slow-light chambers provide many meters of optical delay, possess extremely high resolution and extremely broad spectral ranges, but at the expense of prohibited measurement times per sample that would not be suitable for dynamic studies. In contrast to weak noise performing FT spectrometers and in absence of specialized and expensive equipment, this method can detect subtle peak fluctuations arising from conformational changes and binding using only a standard spectrometer and charged-couple device CCD array to simultaneously achieve high spectral resolution and broad spectral.   One configuration that could be envisaged is making rapid measurements of Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra to visualize and interpret slight variations resulting from molecule conformational change, ionization, and interactions that may give insights into its photophysical and photochemical properties. Many fluorophores, such as Acridine Orange, have excitation and emission spectra depending upon their local chemical environment. Using this method, it may be possible to measure very slight shifts in fluorescence emission spectra that may indicate how the fluorophore is binding to a target and thus give insight into both the fluorophore’s and binding target’s chemical structure. By exploiting a measurement modality such as one might find in photo-activated localization in microscopy (PALM), it is possible to obtain superresolved spectra of these fluorophores that may give information about their bound and unbound states, or local chemical environments. (more...)

University researchers have developed technologies for on-demand dispensing and delivery of scents. (more...)

The ubiquitous LCD screen is energy inefficient because most of the photons generated by the backlight unit are lost to the polarizing layers (75%). For instance, when a black color is displayed by the LCD, the backlight is still fully on thereby wasting energy that could otherwise be conserved or recycled. The power consumption of the backlight units takes up 80~90% of the total power consumption in LCD modules.       (more...)

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a widely-utilized method for analyzing small molecule compositions. It is among the most sensitive techniques available and has great potential for studying metabolic profiles in living organisms. Since variations in the metabolite concentrations are indicative of many disease states, NMR can be a powerful diagnostic tool. In practice, however, this requires sensitivity still beyond the capabilities of current instruments. As a result, using NMR for diagnostic purposes has been limited to academic research. A key component responsible for the sensitivity is the NMR probe, which holds the sample as it is inserted into the magnetic field. Advancing the probe design is critical to enabling practical medical applications of NMR. (more...)

This invention is a new process to create microlens arrays and microwells in plastic.Microlenses are primarily fabricated from glass and optical grade polymers. One such plastic is polystyrene (PS), which has a high index of refraction, high optical transmission, and spectral band pass. Glass microlens array production is comparatively older but polymers have been favored for their affordability and ease of manufacture as well as the ability to control their thermal and mechanical properties. Previous methods for polymer arrays include: photoresist reflow, microjet printing, and direct laser writing. High temperature reflow of photoresist to create such rounded high aspect ratio structures is difficult and often results in rather shallow lenses. Then, to transfer the patterns into hard plastics via hot embossing, costly and slow electroplating is required. Instead, we created our molds using a laser jet printer and a technique which solves the shortcomings of modern manufacturing techniques. We address the issue of microfabricating high aspect ratio structures with high curvature (deep and round). Reflow of photoresist, the common way to make such structures typically results in shallow radii of curvature structures. Moreover, to transfer such structures to hard plastics typically require hot embossing, which requires a metallized (e.g. nickel electroplated) mold. This is very slow and expensive. Our technique allows our masters to be created with a laserjet printer. Then we can do soft lithography to transfer this to PDMS. Finally, we use the PDMS mold for the hot embossing back into a thermoplastic sheet. One problem solved by plastic microwells is the culturing of embryoid bodies (EB). EBs require size, morphology, uniformity and reproducibility control. Previous methods often required a trade-off between quantity and uniformity. PDMS microwells were a great improvement and did much to address these concerns. PDMS have the drawbacks of non-selective absorption, swelling, and poor mechanicalproperties. Polymer microlens arrays have been seen to have much potential but popular techniques for fabrication have various problems. For example,photoresist reflow suffers from chemical and thermal instability, has high requirements for consistency and reproducibility, and need photosensitive material. Some such disadvantages have been overcome but very often require expensive equipment and a time consuming process. This is new method of creating features on the microscale. The inverse of features previously formed in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is transferred to a thermoplastic such as prestressed polystyrene. This is performed by placing the thermoplastic on the PDMS mold, forcing the substrates towards one another through uniform pressure, and baking them past the glass transition temperature of the thermoplastic. Inherent in this process are the multitude of techniques to pattern in PDMS and the ability of thermoplastics to become malleable when properly heated. The purpose of this is to create microstructures that may be used in various applications such as embryoid body culture or optical communication and interconnection. To demonstrate ability of the microlens arrays, we conducted a simple laser experiment was performed. As the laser was shown through the 460 um microlens array a z-stack of images were acquired. Using this information the numerical aperture for several lens were calculated to approximately 0.14. With this demonstration the functionality of this new microlens array design has been proven. This new, inexpensive and relatively simple method to fabricate microlens arrays in a hard plastic with excellent optical properties can provide a platform for optical applications. (more...)

Many crystalline materials can be grown on foreign substrates; but for their intended applications, materials often need to be either free from the substrate or transferred to a different substrate. One such example is where there is a need to obtain a device structure where a direct bandgap semiconductor (e.g., GaAs) is combined on silicon, or to place an optically active material on an optically transparent or a highly thermally conductive substrate. (more...)

Error correcting codes are used in a multitude of applications, including wireless communications (e.g. cell phones), computer hard disks, deep-space and satellite communications. Discovered in 2009, polar codes are a major breakthrough in coding theory, the only family of codes known to have an explicit construction and efficient encoding and decoding algorithms, while also being “capacity achieving” over binary input symmetric memoryless channels.A limitation of polar codes to date is that their performance at short to moderate block lengths is disappointing. There are two possible culprits: the codes themselves are inherently weak at these lengths, or the successive cancellation decoder employed to decode them is significantly degraded with respect to maximum likelihood decoding performance. These two possibilities are complementary, and so both may occur. (more...)

Multiplex assays are extremely useful in biomedical research for producing genomic and proteomic data.  The ability to translate novel biomarkers for various diseases into new diagnostic multiplex assays is highly attractive from a drug discovery point of view.  However, the actual execution of creating such high-throughput multiplex assays remains challenging, as they require the ability to reliably track the identity and location of individual probes throughout an experiment.  One way of accomplishing this is by using encoded beads, where uniquely identifiable beads are attached to each individual probe.  Spectral encoding is a popular method of encoding beads and involves mixtures of luminescent materials that emit light at different wavelengths in order to generate distinguishable output signatures.  Typically, however, this approach is limited by low photostability and small numbers of usable unique codes.  In order to accelerate the discovery of new biomarkers for drug discovery purposes, there is a need for a more efficient and cost-effective method of creating encoded beads for high-throughput multiplex assays.      (more...)

The UCSD Sky Imager is an instrument that helps in the forecasting of solar irradiance one to thirty minutes ahead of time. The instrument is built from commercially available off-the-shelf components but runs a proprietary data acquisition system. (more...)

The human brain constantly processes streams of sensory data to distinguish between thousands of object categories. While our ability to quickly do this seems effortless, computer scientists have yet to construct algorithms that rival our capabilities. The best algorithms are domain specific and combine many types of engineered features, while algorithms applicable to multiple sensory domains are almost nonexistent. Determining how the brain accomplishes these tasks has been one of the major goals of neuroscience. Likewise, researchers in computer vision, machine audition, and machine olfaction are endeavoring to discover algorithms for stimulus recognition. Gnostic Networks are a theory for how the brain hierarchically processes streams of sensory data to enable objects to be classified, despite natural variations in their presentation. (more...)

A novel type of capacitor used to create rechargeable batteries with extremely long lifetimes.  (more...)

3D displays are increasingly popular in consumer and commercial application. Many such displays show 3D images to viewers wearing special glasses, while showing an incomprehensible double image to viewers without glasses. These stereoscopic displays provide a different image to the viewer’s right and left eyes to produce a three-dimensional (3D) percept. The most popular 3D display paradigm shows a pair of images on the same screen, intended for the viewers’ left and right eyes. The lenses of special shuttered or polarized “stereo glasses” pass images to the correct eye. A viewer not wearing these glasses sees both images superimposed; creating a “ghosted” double-image where two copies of objects appear overlaid.  Implementation of 3D displays has increased drastically, moving from a niche product a few years ago to mass market acceptance today with applications in entertainment, medical imaging, and engineering visualization. Currently, 3D glasses are required to view 3D images, but they’re not always desired by the user; in part due to the expense and in part because they interfere with other activities.  (more...)

With progress slowing down in improving multimedia visual and audio quality, there is an increased need for enhancing the viewer experience through other means. Recent research has shown increased emotional immersion, sense of presence, and sense of realism when tactile stimulation accompanies movies. Such tactile stimulation has been utilized in other applications as well, including video games, television, virtual reality simulation, music, and social interaction. However, current tactile stimulation devices used for entertainment purposes face issues with ease of use and the ability to administer stimulation in various intensities at various locations. Furthermore, multisensory stimulations have limited availability in four- or more dimensional movie theaters built in with costly infrastructures in selected amusement and theme parks. There is thus a need for a versatile, programmable, non-invasive, portable, and easy-to-setup tactile stimulation device that can be scaled and adapted to various entertainment applications.  (more...)

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a novel high resolution imaging technique, referred to as Photo-Magnetic Imaging (PMI), that combines the abilities of optical and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging systems. Images are created with PMI by heating tissue with a light (e.g. laser) and measuring the resulting temperature change with MR Thermometry. This change in temperature can then be related to a tissue’s absorption, scattering, and metabolic properties. PMI addresses the limitations of current optical imaging techniques by providing a repeatable, non-contact, high resolution optical image with increased quantitative accuracy. This technique can be used for a wide-range of applications including but not limited to imaging of small animals for research purposes. This technique may also be used in imaging the tissue and organs of a patient. (more...)

Present-day digital audio workstations (DAWs) have allowed the home enthusiast to achieve professional quality audio production. Artificial reverberation algorithms allow the user to render sounds as if they had been recorded in a particular acoustic space. This could be for the purpose of naturalistic spatialization or for aesthetic purposes specific to a piece of music. Convolution reverberators are among the most realistic methods available and can accurately reproduce the reverberation of a particular acoustic space, as described by an impulse response. Current methods for impulse response measurement are highly susceptible to environmental noise, require specialized equipment, and can be difficult for non-experts to operate. (more...)

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a practical cutting device for obtaining uniformly thick cartilage slices from the costal (rib) cartilage.The cartilage slices are used for surgical reconstruction procedures.The importance of this device is that it yields highly uniform slices from the central core of a rib cartilage specimen.These slices are used as grafts in facial reconstructive procedures such as rhinoplasty and otoplasty. (more...)

UC Davis researchers have developed a multivariate optical computer (MOC) capable of determining concentrations of individual componpents of a multivariate spectral model.  The device operates by dispersing light through the grating and onto the digital mircormirror device (DMD).  Wavelengths are sent to the detector and spectra analysis is performed.  This spectral detection system improves upon traditional methods of detecting dispersed spectra on a charged-couple device (CCD) array by improving the signal-to-noise ratio while analyzing complex spectra via less costly materials. (more...)

A variety of techniques to improve the performance of LEDs and laser diodes by embedding photonic crystals or voids into the optoelectronic devices. (more...)

Despite the many advantages and demonstrated uses of fuel cells, they are expensive because they require platinum and other precious metals as catalysts. The best way to eliminate platinum while maintaining the many benefits is through the use of a high performance hydroxide exchange membrane, the Nafion® equivalent for a alkaline fuel cell. UCR’s Prof. Yushan has developed an alkaline membrane that will one day replace Nafion® and enable non-precious metal fuel cell catalysts that are composed of elements such as cobalt, nickel, iron and silver. These metals cost between $2 and $12 per ounce as compared to platinum that currently trades in the range of $1,200/ounce and peaked at over $2,000/ounce last summer. The Office of Technology Commercialization has licensed Prof. Yan’s technology to Full Cycle Energy, an alternative energy company. This innovation will hopefully lead to a massive drop in the cost of goods needed to produce fuel cells. This price reduction will allow fuel cells to have a lower price point per watt than internal combustion engines and batteries.  (more...)

The purpose of this device is to create a void in bone (e.g. the vertebral body) coaxially through an introducer needle, so that bone cement can be injected to fill the void, for the purpose of bone strengthening andlor stabilization. (more...)

Microfluidics offers many advantages, such as automatically performing assays and minimal reagent usage. Most lab-on-a-chip systems, however, still require interfacing with macroscale tubes for pressure driven fluid handling. This inhibits scalability and parallelization and requires excessive power consumption. (more...)

As the complexity and size of communications system-on-chip (SoC) exponentially grow, companies are increasingly outsourcing the design and manufacturing process. However, along with its significantly lower fabrication cost, outsourcing renders ensuring the security of the design difficult. There is a growing threat of Trojan attacks, in which an IC design is surreptitiously and maliciously altered. (more...)

As applications for high data rate wireless communications increase, so does the demand for high frequency receivers with low power consumption. However, as the frequency of operation increases, device gains drop, rendering conventional receiver designs ineffective. (more...)

Developed here are a set of technologies to enable all-optical seismometers for use in boreholes and other harsh environments where expensive electronics cannot be put at risk. Employing the approaches developed here, seismometers collect and route all data optically to a safe location where it can then be processed electronically. (more...)

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a microfluidic device that has a combination of side wall and planar electrodes designed to generate magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and dielectrophoresis (DEP) forces on cells in solution. The MHD and DEP forces can separate a heterogeneous population of cells based on their different dielectric properties and sizes. (more...)

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a Laplace pressure trap that can fuse droplets from different inlets and fuse droplets generated at different frequencies. The device traps and fuses droplets passively by balancing the driving hydrostatic pressure with increasing Laplace pressure imposed by the device’s design geometry. Above are video frames showing the Laplace pressure trap and of a single droplet fusion event at the Laplace trap. Frame A - Reference droplet can be seen waiting for its fusion partner. Excess partner droplets can be seen exiting towards the outlet. Frames B and C show the reference droplet and its fusion partner fuse and move toward the outlet. Frame D shows the next reference droplet approaching the trap. (more...)

UC San Diego inventors have designed a system that takes an arbitrary speaker array and provides focused sound projection that is: Spatialized—present a localized beam of high quality audio. Localized—present no sound for most of the listening area, except a localized area. Binaural—present a sound as being located external to the listener. Performance improves with the number of speakers in the array. The invention has been implemented successfully on a speaker array driven by specialized software. (more...)

Diagnostic device for detecting malaria infection by blood sample testing. (more...)

Stochastic methods have been broadly applied for operational risk management in the industry of forecasting trends. The method can generate predication for any time-dependent quantity (stock market, weather data, solar and wind power production, etc.). However, the conventional models that use divided differences and even integer differentials of input variable, are not effective in the situation that incomplete or limited history data are accessible. It’s desirable to be able to capture the non-local stochastic nature of the input variable and the important history effects, to predict better results for any nonlinear or complex trend. (more...)

Quartz crystal microbalances (QCMs) with flat electrodes are typically used as mass detectors with monolayer sensitivity. However, the sensitivity of such devices can be increased by enlarging the effective surface area. Researchers in UCI’s Department of Physics have developed a highly sensitive QCM by enlarging the surface area via the application of porous materials deposited on the flat electrodes. (more...)

Researchers at UC San Diego have invented a resistless projection lithographic method to generate three-dimensional patterns on silicon substrates. A porous silicon layer is formed first by projecting an image or test pattern onto a silicon substrate during standard electrochemical etching. The porous layer is then removed in a wet etch revealing a 3-D image or test pattern in micrometer resolution. This technique does not involve the use of complicated, multi-step lithography or mask aligners. It is also quick; a multilayered master can be made from a computer design in less than 60 minutes. Feature sizes of 70 microns have been demonstrated, but smaller features should be possible. (more...)

Stiction (adhesion of suspended structures and the underlying surface) is a considerable problem for batch fabricated MEMS devices. MEMS devices are often released through wet etching. As the wafer is removed from the wet etch, liquid is trapped between the small space separating the MEMS device and the substrate. This liquid, through capillary forces, pulls the cantilevered MEMS device down to the substrate where it remains. Numerous techniques have been explored to resolve this problem. However, most require significant trade-offs e.g. non-standard silicon processing, additional design structures, long release process times, etc. (more...)

Micropumps are a critical element of microfluidics, as they are required to move small volumes of liquid in a controlled, energy-efficient manner. Several categories of micropumps have been reported, such as mechanical micropumps, electrokinetic micropumps, and valveless bubble-driven micropumps. The valveless bubble pumps are attractive for microfluidics because of their simplicity in fabrication over mechanical pumps and their flexibility in working liquids over electrokinetic pumps. The preferred method to date of generating bubbles in the valveless pump is by thermal generation (boiling). However, this method has several limitations. First, boiling requires high levels of energy to induce vapor formation. Second, the vapor condenses back to liquids much slower than they boiled, which limits the cycling speed of the pumping action. Another common bubble generation methods for the valveless pump is electrolysis, but they are not suitable for closed systems, such as fuel cells, because of the inability to eliminate the gas bubbles. (more...)

Bottom-up synthesis can produce a very limited variety of particle shapes, such as spheres and rods, in a viscous liquid. The resulting particles can be highly uniform in size. However, there is no general method for mass-producing a wide variety of highly complex shapes that are specified by a customer using bottom-up self-assembly approaches. Although uniform microspheres have been used extensively in many protocols, these applications can be enhanced by using particles that have customized, user-specified shapes. Mass-producing particle shapes that conform with a desired design would revolutionize the variety of dispersions that are commercially available. (more...)

UC San Diego inventors have devised a novel method for locating one or more deeptowed or autonomous underwater vehicles during geophysical or oceanographic surveys. The invention has the following features: Works in real time. Saves the time and cost of deploying, navigating, and recovering the seafloor transponder net. Has the navigation array move with the underwater vehicle, rather than remaining stationary. (more...)

The present invention relates to a hearing device and, more particularly, to a device that can mechanically drive the ossicular chain while being located  in the ear canal. (more...)

Modern optical microscopy has been the key to advancing our understanding of structures and functions of living cells. A major disadvantage, however, has been its diffraction-limited spatial resolution, that is, resolving only features no smaller than half the wavelength used. Several approaches have been developed to overcome this drawback, e.g.: near-field scanning optical microscopy which scans a sharp tip over the object; stimulated emission depletion microscopy, which focuses the irradiation spot to below the diffraction limit; stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, which locates single fluorophore molecules; and structured illumination microscopy (SIM), which superposes a light pattern on an object with sub-wavelength features to produce fringe patterns that can be optically measured and de-convolved to form a high-resolution image. Significant spatial resolution improvement can be gained using these techniques but with low imaging speed as a trade-off. Standard or linear SIM offers, at most, only a factor-of-two resolution improvement because the illumination pattern used is diffraction-limited. Non-linear SIM applied to fluorescence microscopy achieves >2 resolution enhancement by introducing higher harmonics to the illumination pattern through the nonlinear, saturated fluorescence response; this technique entails additional limitations (e.g., sample heating/damage, need to acquire more images) and is not applicable to scattering. (more...)

An inexpensive method of generating highly uniform metallic balls from capillary stream break-up at ultra high speeds. Manufacture of solder balls (and other metallic balls), commonly used in the electronics industry, can be achieved using this method. Due to the nature of the droplet formation from the capillary stream break-up employed by this method, the resulting balls are highly uniform. The fabrication rate is on the order of tens of thousands of drops/sec, with no sieving or sorting necessary. (more...)

Recent developments in semiconductor manufacturing technology have resulted in unprecedented density of transistor elements per silicon area. This new technology facilitates a dramatic increase in circuit complexity of the modern computer and communication hardware. With transistors dimensions as low as 90nm, operation frequencies in the 5GHz range are possible and will surely be surpassed by the next generation of 60 nm devices. Increased switching frequency inevitably causes higher power dissipation and results in higher overall current consumption. Lower, junction breakdown voltages of only 1.2-1.5V are expected to become even lower in the future, thus posing a limitation on operating voltage level. According to Intel's Roadmap 2005, the next generation of processors will operate at 0.9V DC voltage, with current consumption of up to 120A. Systems current slew rate of 140A/uSec is expected when the processors come out of the power saving mode and vice versa when entering the sleep mode. (more...)

Large scale confinement chambers have been created in the past using traditional glass-blowing techniques. However, conventional glass-blowing can only be used to create large components and requires the components to be made one at a time. Micro-glass spheres have previously been fabricated by letting glass particles fall through a temperature-controlled drop tower. While it is possible to create hollow spheres by introducing a blowing agent in the glass, these micro-spheres are not attached to a substrate and are therefore difficult to integrate with micro-machined components on a wafer. (more...)

Large scale confinement chambers have been created in the past using traditional glass-blowing techniques. However, conventional glass-blowing can only be used to create large components and requires the components to be made one at a time. Micro-glass spheres have previously been fabricated by letting glass particles fall through a temperature-controlled drop tower. While it is possible to create hollow spheres by introducing a blowing agent in the glass, these micro-spheres are not attached to a substrate and are therefore difficult to integrate with micro-machined components on a wafer. (more...)

SEVERAL important classes of MEMS devices, such as resonators, gyroscopes, and chemical sensors, rely on resonance phenomenon in their operation. In these devices, resonant motion needs to be actuated, sensed, and controlled. Capacitive phenomena are commonly used for transduction in vibratory MEMS devices due to the ease of fabrication, low sensitivity to temperature changes, and other practical advantages. However, conventional capacitive detection schemes produce a signal proportional to such system parameters as nominal sense capacitance, carrier voltage, and gain of the current amplifier. These dependencies constitute a need to calibrate individual MEMS devices to address fabrication imperfections, and fluctuation of the parameters due to changing environment and aging. A detection technique independent of these system parameters can be of great advantage. (more...)