Texas ECE professors Ruochen Lu and Neal Hall received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) award for the research project “Integrated Sensors at High Temperature Using Transferred Piezoelectric Transducers and Epitaxial Transistors” that is developing high performance physical sensors with long lifespans, capable of performing in thermally harsh environments.

Lu and Hall are responsible for micro/nanofabrication, RF design and characterization, transducer design, fabrication, and testing - and are working with investigators from Stanford University and UCLA who specialize in energy-efficient system architecture and electronic materials. The team will develop high-bandwidth, high-dynamic-range analog sensor microelectronics technologies that operate at high temperature without degrading performance. Performance will be validated through the development and demonstration of a pressure sensor module.

Lu’s research group leverages micro electromechanical systems technologies to enable chip-scale acoustic and cross-domain microsystems. The lab aims to demonstrate cutting-edge piezoelectric devices and hybrid systems for signal processing, sensing, and computing applications. Hall’s research is focused in the areas of silicon micromachining / MEMS, advanced transducer development, optics and photonics, and acoustics and dynamics.