MNTR Welcome
Welcome to the MNTR group at the Northwestern University. The central mission of our group is to educate passionate and creative individuals to become leaders.
Our group's primary research expertise and endeavors lie in the following areas: microfabrication technology, nanofabrication, bioinspired sensors, and smart integrated systems.
Our group develops novel and efficient fabrication technologies at the microscale and the nanoscale. Often we involve both traditional semiconductor materials as well as non-conventional polymer materials. We focus on developing MEMS, as well as nanofabrication and nanopatterning technologies. Further, we apply the micro- and nanoscale fabrication expertise to enable new devices and, in turn, new systems and applications.
We are developing biologically inspired sensors - sensors with functions and/or structures based on inspiration from biology. Biology offers exquisite examples of sensors and sensory intelligence. These have been the subjects of observation of biology for hundreds of years. With the advent of micro and nanotechnology, it now becomes possible to build engineering-equivalent of biological sensors. Through bioinspired sensors research, we seek to advance engineering as well as deepen understanding of complex biological systems.
For example, our group is developing artificial haircell sensors that mimic the haircell sensor, widely found in many animals and perform a large variety of functions. The biological haircell, a common neuronal mechanoreceptor, is responsible for a wide variety of sensing in different animal species. Haircells are responsible for hearing (human cochlea), flow sensing (insects, spiders, and fish), vibration sensing (insects), equilibrium sensing (human inner ear), and joint angle sensing (insect), to name a few examples. Since 1998, our group has been developing artificial haircell sensors as modular building blocks of sensors for flow, vibration, touch, and acoustic vibration. Further, we are interested in building arrays of networked sensors, including artificial lateral line that mimics the lateral line sensor organ of fish and amphibian animals. We also develop robotics systems based on the new sensors. For example, artificial lateral lines and multimodal tactile sensors are being used to enable sensor-rich robotics systems that can survived in unstructured environment.
The group is organized under Dr. Chang Liu, who are holding joint faculty positions in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering departments. Members of the group come from many interdisciplinary background, including EE, ME, BioEngr, Material Science, Biology and Fluid mechanics. We collaborate widely with people from many different fields, including animal biology, materials, signal processing, control, integrated circuit, fluid mechanics, chemistry, and nanotechnology.