Robert Hous with Mehran Mehregany

Mechanical Characterization and Design of Flexible Silicon Carbide Microstructures

This project will investigate the feasibility of utilizing silicon carbide (SiC) in miniature flexible ribbon cables.  These cables have applications in implantable neural sensors, where their flexibility and biocompatibility make them ideal for such applications.  Previous works using Boron doped Silicon show great success, with the biggest disadvantage of the Boron doped Silicon being its relative fragility.  This study will measure the material strengths of SiC, and then compare these findings to the previously measured strength of Boron doped Si.  Material strengths for the SiC will be recorded for a variety of different structures.  Each structure will be stressed to the point of failure in either a bending, twisting, or pushing mode to determine exact values for the structure’s strength.