In Fall 2022, Turja Nandy received Graduate Student Research Travel Award for presenting IEEE conference paper (in-person). This award is given by Marquette University Graduate School.

The talk was presented on March 20, 2020, where the design, fabrication, and testing of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), metal-contact, micro-switches and the issues associated with performance and reliability were discussed. Specifically, unstable electrical contact resistance reduces micro-switch performance and severely degrades device reliability resulting from degradation in the micro-contact region. Therefore, our research focus is to improve the micro-switch reliability by improving micro-contacts with novel contact materials and engineered micro-contact surfaces. The contact metallurgies considered in this work are thin film combinations of Au and Ruthenium. A typical MEMS switch consists of an upper hemispherical bump and a lower planar contact. A micro-switch with engineered micro-contacts will retain the upper hemisperical contact but will replace the lower planar contacts with 2D pyramidal structure. This work suggests that the combination of engineered lower contacts and composite materials can significantly improve the performance and reliability of micro-switches.

During September 16-18, 2019, Dr. Coutu and Protap Mahanta attended 65^th IEEE Holm Conference held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Protap Mahanta presented one oral presentation and one poster presentation. Turja Nandy and Mohiuddin Munna volunteered the technical sessions of the conference.

 

During June 17-19, 2019, Turja Nandy and Dr. Coutu attended NANOTECH 2019 Conference – TechConnect World Innovation 2019, held in Boston, Massachusetts. Turja Nandy presented two oral presentations and one poster presentation in the symposium: MEMS & NEMS Devices, Modeling & Applications.