A solid-state, open-system, differential calorimeter.

This article details the design, modeling, construction, and evaluation of an open system calorimeter that operates in a normal room environment to measure endothermic or exothermic events in a system subjected to a steady heat flux. The calorimeter is unique because it allows the measurement of energy and power from an "open" system, where a heat flux enters and leaves the calorimetric boundary in a well-controlled manner. It is also novel because it utilizes a solid state heating and cooling assembly that acts as an electronic heat reservoir.

An open circuit voltage decay system for performing injection dependent lifetime spectroscopy.

Of all of the material parameters associated with a semiconductor, the carrier lifetime is by far the most complex and dynamic, being a function of the dominant recombination mechanism, the equilibrium number of carriers, the perturbations in carriers (e.g., carrier injection), and the temperature, to name the most prominent variables.

A 500 A device characterizer utilizing a pulsed-linear amplifier.

With the advent of modern power semiconductor switching elements, the envelope defining "high power" is an ever increasing quantity. Characterization of these semiconductor power devices generally falls into two categories: switching, or transient characteristics, and static, or DC characteristics. With the increasing native voltage and current levels that modern power devices are capable of handling, characterization equipment meant to extract quasi-static IV curves has not kept pace, often leaving researchers with no other option than to construct ad hoc curve tracers from disparate pieces of equipment.

An evaluation system for experimental silicon and silicon carbide super gate turn off thyristors.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a small-scale pulsed power system specifically intended to evaluate the suitability of experimental silicon and silicon carbide high power Super Gate Turn Off thyristors for high action (500 A(2) s and above) pulsed power applications where energy is extracted from a storage element in a rapid and controlled manner. To this end, six of each type of device was placed in a controlled three phase rectifier circuit which was in turn connected to an aircraft ground power motor-generator set and subjected to testing protocols with varying power levels, while parameters such as offset firing angle were varied.

Automated modular high energy evaluation system for experimental thyristor devices.

A high energy, modular, completely automated test bed with integrated data acquisition and characterization systems was successfully designed in order to perform both safe operating area as well as very high volume reliability testing on experimental silicon carbide Super Gate Turn Off (SGTO) thyristors. Although the system follows a modular design philosophy, with each functional block acting as a peripheral to a main control module and can be adapted to arbitrary power and pulse width levels, for the specific SGTO devices initially evaluated it was configured to have the device discharge variable current levels of up to 6 kA into a 0.5 Ω resistive load with a relatively square pulse fixed at 100 μs full width at half maximum delivering energy levels up to 1.

Haptic controlled three-axis MEMS gripper system.

In this work, we describe the development and testing of a three degree of freedom meso/micromanipulation system for handling micro-objects, including biological cells and microbeads. Three-axis control is obtained using stepper motors coupled to micromanipulators. The test specimen is placed on a linear X-stage, which is coupled to one stepper motor.