Detection of fecal indicating bacteria plays an important role in water quality monitoring to ensure safe human water contact and/or drinking. Specifically, epidemiological studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have shown strong correlations between illnesses and bacteria concentrations of Enterococci and E.
This goal of this research and development program is to enable revolutionary advances aimed at providing high resolution imaging through even the worst material environments.
There is an increasing demand for wireless power charging of mobile electronic devices, electric vehicles, biomedical implants and IoT sensor networks. Many of the already available wireless power transmission systems are based on inductive coupling and the size ranges in the cm’s scale, linked to the large surface area requirement. A competing technology is based on an RF approach, with small size chip but impractical power levels of pW to µW, and efficiency close to unity.
The overall goal of this SBIR effort is to develop a rapid, portable system to test for presence and viability of coliform bacteria and E. coli in field water samples. The end system will be portable, battery-powered, reusable, easy to use, and selective to the specific indicator organism.
Portable and wearable electronics require wireless charging to sustain mobile usage at convenient positions and locations. The goal is to develop a compact, highly power efficient wireless power transfer charging system operating at 6.78 MHz, which is compliant with the Rezence standard.The research scope includes development of a highly compact, high efficiency, ferrite-core receiver antenna; and a metamaterial lens to enhance WPT efficiency between the transmitter and the receiver. In this work, we focus on WPT receiver modules for various portable and wearable consumable electronics with a power rating of ~10 W such as smart phones, radios, laptops, tablets, and military electronics. In future work, this technology could also be scalable to other power ranges, such as mW for biomedical implants to kW for automobiles.
We seek to develop a platform that allows magnetic field sensing using a small footprint, in the absence of an external power supply. Our approach uses magnetoelectric nanofibers to create a zero-power magnetic field sensor. The challenge is to develop methods to assemble these materials into devices that leverage their unique anisotropic properties.
The figure of merit for magnetoelectric materials is the magnetoelectric coefficient, a measure of the amount of voltage generated with respect to the magnitude of the applied magnetic field. Bulk magnetoelectrics and thin films are limited by defects and substrate clamping respectively. To overcome the limitations of thin-film based composite magnetoelectrics we have developed magnetoelectric bilayer structures on a single nanofiber, i.e., 1D magnetoelectrics. These materials are theoretically predicted to have magnetoelectric coupling coefficients that are orders of magnitude greater than their thin film counterparts.
Magnetoelectric materials can be employed in a wide variety of applications including magnetic field sensors and tunable resonance energy harvesters. By optimizing for material system and architecture, drastic increases in magnitude of voltage generated with decreased size can be achieved. This could allow for more sensitive magnetic field sensors appropriate for a wider array of applications and decreased size to allow for easier integration into ICs.
The overall goal of UF’s effort on this DARPA Atoms to Products program (under sub-contract to SRI International) is to manufacture the micro-robots for demonstration of a massively parallel (1,000+) micro-robot factory. Each micro-robot comprises at least one magnetic base and one end effector. The magnetic base is configured with a pattern of north and south poles. A starting design is a 3 mm x 3 mm x 0.4 mm thick base that is arranged into a 9-pole checkerboard pattern. The simplest end effector is a simple mechanical rod attached to the top of the magnetic case.
The micro-robot platforms (magnetic bases and end effectors) will be mass manufactured using a combination of precision manufacturing and microfabrication techniques. Rather than assembling discrete magnets into specific pole patterns, selective magnetization techniques will be used to “imprint” the desired pole pattern into mechanically contiguous layers. These methods will eliminate the need for assembly, and also facilitate the massive batch manufacture of many magnetic bases in parallel. Concurrently, end effectors will be microfabricated using suitable microfabrication technologies. The bases and end effectors will be combined together via monolithic co-fabrication or via wafer-scale batch-assembly processes.
There is an increasing demand for wireless power charging of mobile electronic devices, electric vehicles, biomedical implants and IoT sensor networks. Many of the already available wireless power transmission systems are based on inductive coupling and the size ranges in the cm’s scale, linked to the large surface area requirement. A competing technology is based on an RF approach, with small size chip but impractical power levels of pW to µW, and efficiency close to unity. The alternative working principle that we propose results in a more compact solution that can be reduced to mm’s chip size while producing reasonable output power (1 mW range) at low frequency ranges (50 Hz to 1 kHz).
We have developed an electrodynamic wireless power transmission (EWPT) system that relies on the magnetic-to-mechanic-to electrical conversion from a transmitter to a remote resonator, through electrodynamic transduction. The mechanical motion of a permanent magnet is converted into electrical power, when the magnet is set in motion/rotation, by a time-varying magnetic field, next to the receiver windings.
The major goal of this project is to develop a MEMS-based miniature imaging probe that can perform three-dimensional imaging in vivo inside human body using nonlinear optical effects.
The goal of this project is to develop a light-weigth optical probe that can be mounted on a freely moving mouse and continuously obtain in vivo 3D imaging of neural activity, particularly using Ca2+ fluorescence imaging. MEMS technology is used for miniaturization.