Titre:
The fast and the not so furious biomedical microsensors enabled by Silicon-on-Insulator MEMS and CMOS technologies
Conférencier:
Laurent Francis ,
Université catholique de Louvain
Lieu:
Université Laval, Pavillon Vachon, Local 2870 ,
Date et heure:
mercredi le 22 août 2012 de
09:00 à 11:00
Résumé: Micro and nanotechnologies have gained a large momentum in the biomedical field. On base of them, one can dream about these smart and nearly invisible spy agents relaying continuously information about the health status of a patient. From point-of-care analysis to the continuous environmental monitoring, the need is set for technologies and devices that can be as fast as possible while consuming as little energy as possible. Usually, they must meet common requirements such as being portable, i.e. operating on batteries for a long period of time, with a remote link for data transfer, and to sustain one or more harsh sterilization process. At the Université catholique de Louvain, we have been focused on designing, implementing and real-life testing devices devoted to this end. In this talk, I will go through different examples showing that the combination of Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) transducers fabricated by MEMS technologies with CMOS integrated circuits is leading to fast and ultra-low power biomedical microsensors. The given examples will cover the detection of bacteria, the measurement of temperatures after irradiation sterilization, and the monitoring of breathing cycles with flow or humidity sensors.
Note biographique: Laurent A. Francis was born in Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1978. He received the M.Eng. degree in materials science with a minor in electrical engineering and the PhD degree in applied sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Currently, he holds the Microsystems Chair position at UCL as Associate Professor and is the leading member of the Sensors, Microsystems and Actuators Laboratory of Louvain (SMALL). His scientific interests are related to ultra-low power microsensors for biomedical applications or operation in harsh environments, and on micro and nanofabrication technologies, in particular thin film coating by atomic layer deposition (ALD). His PhD thesis was related to acoustic-wave based microsystems for biosensing applications at IMEC (Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center) in Leuven, Belgium. Between 2000 and 2007 he was with IMEC as researcher, successively in the Biosensors and RF-MEMS groups. In 2011, he was a visiting professor at the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. He is regular member of IEEE (UFFC, MTT and EMBS) and a board member of the Belgian National Committee Biomedical Engineering. He is an editorial board member of the “Journal of Sensors” (Hindawi Publ. Corp.) He has authored or co-authored forty publications in international scientific journals, conferences, book chapters and holds one patent. More information, abstracts and talks are available on http://uclouvain.academia.edu/LaurentFrancis.