Design of a Mass Air Flow Sensor Employing Additive Manufacturing and Standard Airfoil Geometry

This work concerns the design, fabrication, and preliminary characterization of a novel sensor for determining the air intake of low and medium power internal combustion engines employed at various applications in the marine industry. The novelty of the presented sensor focuses on the fabrication process, which is based on additive manufacturing combined with PCB technology, and the design of the sensing elements housing geometry, which is derived through suitable CFD simulations and is based on standard airfoil geometry. The proposed process enables low-cost, fast fabrication, effective thermal isolation, and facile electrical interconnection to the corresponding circuitry of the sensor. For initial characterization purposes, the prototype device was integrated into a DIESEL engine testbed while a commercially available mass air flow sensor was employed as a reference; the proper functionality of the developed prototype has been validated. Key features of the proposed device are low-cost, fast on-site manufacturing of the device, robustness, and simplicity, suggesting numerous potential applications in marine engineering.

Semiconductor Chip Electrical Interconnection and Bonding by Nano-Locking with Ultra-Fine Bond-Line Thickness

The potential of an innovation for establishing a simultaneous mechanical, thermal, and electrical connection between two metallic surfaces without requiring a prior time-consuming and expensive surface nanoscopic planarization and without requiring any intermediate conductive material has been explored. The method takes advantage of the intrinsic nanoscopic surface roughness on the interconnecting surfaces: the two surfaces are locked together for electrical interconnection and bonding with a conventional die bonder, and the connection is stabilized by a dielectric adhesive filled into nanoscale valleys on the interconnecting surfaces. This “nano-locking” (NL) method for chip interconnection and bonding is demonstrated by its application for the attachment of high-power GaN-based semiconductor dies to its device substrate. The bond-line thickness of the present NL method achieved is under 100 nm and several hundred times thinner than those achieved using mainstream bonding methods, resulting in a lower overall device thermal resistance and reduced electrical resistance, and thus an improved overall device performance and reliability. Different bond-line thickness strongly influences the overall contact area between the bonding surfaces, and in turn results in different contact resistance of the packaged devices enabled by the NL method and therefore changes the device performance and reliability. The present work opens a new direction for scalable, reliable, and simple nanoscale off-chip electrical interconnection and bonding for nano- and micro-electrical devices. Besides, the present method applies to the bonding of any surfaces with intrinsic or engineered surface nanoscopic structures as well.

Electrical Interconnection and Bonding by Nano-Locking

The growing demand for increased chip performance and stable reliability calls for the development of novel off-chip interconnection and bonding methods that can process good electrical, thermal, and mechanical performance simultaneously as well as superior reliability. A chip bonding method with the concept of “nano-locking” (NL) is proposed: the two surfaces are locked together for electrical interconnection, and the connection is stabilized by a dielectric adhesive filled into nanoscale valleys on the interconnecting surfaces. The general applicability of this new method was investigated by applying the method to the die-substrate bonding of two different packages from two different manufacturers. Electrical, optical, and thermal performances as well as reliability tests were carried out. The surface morphology of the bonding package substrates plays an important role in determining the contact resistance at the bonding interfaces. It was shown that samples with different roughness height distribution on the metallic surfaces formed a different total number of contacts and the contact area between the two bonding surfaces under the same bond-line thickness (BLT): a larger number of contact area resulted in a reduced electrical resistance, and thus an improved overall device performance and reliability.

MONITORING OF ENVIRONMENT PARAMETERS BASED ON WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

The main goal of the article is to design an automated wireless sensor system to monitor environment parameters from different locations. If we want to control our environment, we have to know the measurable parameters of it. These parameters are temperature, humidity, light intensity, etc. All of these measurements can help us to improve the efficiency of home automation systems or to save money. The theoretical part contains an overview of the technologies used for the design of a system.The next part contains an explanation of the software part of the work and the electrical interconnection of the equipment used. The last part is devoted to the cloud environment where the data was collected and visualized. The article presents the results of scientific-methodological research (description of the problem, task).

PROPOSAL OF AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR PRESENTATION PURPOSES

The main goal of the article is to design a model of an automated system, which will be used for presentation purposes at the Department of Automation and Human Machine Interactions at the Technical university of Košice. In terms of adequate focus of the presentation, the equipment used in industrial practice was used for designed model. The theoretical part contains an overview of the technologies used for the design of equipment, selection of components and their use in design. The nextpart contains an explanation of the software part of the work and the electrical interconnection of the equipment used. The lastpart is devoted to the design of a model of an automated device in a CAD system. The article presents the results of scientific-methodological research.