Clark School Team Headed by Don DeVoe Awarded $2M DARPA Grant

A team from the A. James Clark School of Engineering has just been awarded a $2M grant from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop "nano-mechanical array signal processors." Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Don DeVoe is the Primary Investigator (PI), and Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Balakumar Balachandran and Professor John Melngailis from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are co-PIs. This is a program led by the University of Maryland, in conjunction with Northrop Grumman, the Army Research Laboratory, and the NSA Laboratory for Physical Sciences.

The goal of the 3-year program is to develop ultra-miniature electromechanical filters based on nanotechnology. The high-frequency filters, operating up to 3GHz, will enable a new class of miniature signal processors for telecommunications and tool for spectrum analysis. The nanomechanical filters are based on piezoelectric materials such as GaAs, AlAs, and AlN.

The project is part of a $40M program within the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office, led by Dr. William Tang.

For more information regarding this project, please contact Dr. DeVoe at 301-405-8125 or by email at ddev@eng.umd.edu.

Published July 5, 2001