National Centres of Excellence

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	Centre of Excellence in RF-MEMS, IMT-Bucharest
Contact person: Dr. Alexandru Muller Contact address: National R&D Institute of Microtechnology, IMT-Bucharest P.O.Box 38-160, Bucharest, Romania
http://www.imt.ro
tel.: + 40-21-490.82.12, fax: +40-21-490.82.38
e-mail: alexm@imt.ro

The laboratory has coordinated one of the first European founded projects in RF MEMS ”MEMSWAVE” (1998-2001). The project was nominated, in 2002 between the first ten European projects for the Descartes Prize (awarded for the best European co-operative research projects). The laboratory is one of the promoters of the RF – MEMS topics in Europe. The laboratory is participating in the FP6 network of excellence “AMICOM” (2004 -2007). The laboratory was recognized at national level as RF-MEMS Center of Excellence, financed by the National Programme MATNANTECH (2002-2005).

Mission: scientific research and technological development of micromachined microwave and millimetre wave devices and circuits, contributions to the developing strategy of the domain. The new RF MEMS technologies including the “membrane supported circuits” represents a solution to manufacture high performance microwave and millimeter wave devices and circuits devoted to the
emerging communication systems.

Main areas of expertise:

 Development of a new generation of circuits devoted to the millimeter wave communications based on the semiconductor (Si, GaAs, GaN) micromachining and nanoprocessing materials;
Design and manufacturing of micromachined, passive circuits elements: inductors, capacitors, filters and antennae (endfire and broadband);
 Design and manufacturing of monolithically and hybrid integrated receiver front-ends based on silicon and GaAs micromachining;
 Design, modelling and manufacturing of reconfigurable millimeter wave circuits for wireless communication systems;
 Electromagnetic modelling of RF switches;
 Studies on magnetostatic wave resonators in microstrip and CPW configurations;
 Design, modelling and manufacturing F-BAR resonators on GaN membrane;
 MEMS and NEMS technologies development.

International network: Partner in the international network FP6 Network of Excellence "Advanced MEMS for RF and Millimeter Wave Communications"
coordinated LAAS-CNRS Toulouse/ Univ. Perugia

International bilateral cooperations

The laboratory has bilateral governmental cooperation with ITC-irst Trento, Univ Tor Vergata , Rome and CNR Rome, FORTH Heraklion, KERI Chanwong, Koreea.

National projects: The national projects contributes to the development of a new generation of circuits based on MEMS and NEMS technologies, devoted to
the millimeter wave communications. The laboratory had 6 projects in the MATNANTECH Programme, one in the MINASIST project, three CEEX projects
(INFOSOC and RENAR programme) as coordinator, two CEEX projects as partners and three projects in the MINASIST+. National partners in these projects are: "Polytechnica" Univ Bucharest, Nat. Inst in Mat. Physics, Military Tech. Academy, "P. Poni" institute Iasi, Valahia Univ. Targoviste.

Research team has multidisciplinary expertise in physics and electronics of microsystems and is composed of 7 senior researchers (5 of them with PhD in physics, electronics, microwave and chemistry), 1 early stage researcher (PhD in electronics), two PhD students in physics and one Master Student.

Team from left to right:
Dan Neculoiu; Cristina Buiculescu; Dan Vasilache; Alexandru Muller;
Ioana Petrini; Gheorghe Sajin; Alexandru Takacsi; Cornel Anton;
Andrei Muller; Alina Cismaru;

Specific facilities:

Computers and software for microwave electromagnetic simulations (IE3D and
Fidelity from ZELAND software packages); Vector network analyzer Hewlett Packard 0.1-18 GHz; Suss Microtech EP 4 prober; Access (by international
cooperation) to millimeter wave on wafer measurements. At the end of 2006 the laboratory has obtained through a successful CEEX project (Module 4) acquisited an and network analyzer with "on wafer" measurement system in the 0.1 -65 GHz range.

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