The development of microtechnologies for harsh environments has made tremendous progress in recent years, and is yet currently mostly in the research domain. Space exploration missions provide a rich application space for these technologies, given the diversity of interesting planetary exploration targets identified by NASA. Also, miniaturization is very important for NASA missions and many terrestrial applications because of the tremendous savings in mass, size and power consumption. Terrestrial applications abound in the aeronautical, automotive, petrochemical, nuclear and medical fields. Recently, we have characterized the performance of several silicon carbide (SiC) based electronics and sensors that are geared toward space applications, and with derivative terrestrial applications. This talk will present an overview of some of the recent key developments in SiC high temperature amplifiers, pressure, chemical, inertial, and flow sensors. General requirements for harsh environment applications of Microsystems and the fundamental challenges associated with meeting such requirements will also be discussed.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Robert S. Okojie received the BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1991, 1993, and 1996, respectively. He worked at Kulite Semiconductor Products, Inc., Leonia, NJ, from 1993 to 1997 as a Senior Research Scientist in the development of high temperature ohmic contacts to 6H-SiC for high temperature applications. He joined Ford Microelectronics, Colorado Springs, CO, in 1997 as a Senior Research Engineer focusing on MEMS smart fuel injectors. In June 1999, he joined the SiC research group at NASA Glenn as an Electronics Engineer, primarily responsible for developing high temperature ohmic contact technology for SiC microsystems. He has published several papers in technical journals and conference proceedings relating to his field, and a contributing author to the CRC MEMS Handbook. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, Sigma Xi, and Co-Chairman of the Compound Semiconductor Technical Committee of the International Reliability Physics Symposium. He currently holds twelve patents relating to SiC technology.

For information, contact: Ms. Brenda Walker at (973)596-3513 or at brenda.e.walker@njit.edu or
Dr. William Carr at carr@njit.edu , or Dr. Andrew U. Meyer: at meyer@njit.edu.

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