Technology Forum Breakfast
Pick up a lunch and join a Tutorial
49th Annual SVC Technical Conference
April 22–27, 2006
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington DC
April 23–27, 2006
Monday Afternoon
Managing for Product Safety and Liability Avoidance
Monday Afternoon, April 24
12:10 p.m.–12:50 p.m.
Presenter: Lew Bass, Lewis Bass International
This presentation will cover four major topics. The first will be a review of some of the situations manufacturers can get into that could turn into liabilities. How did this happen? What changed? What was unknown? Was something missed or was the risk unknowable? How can a manufacturer manage its projects for product safety and liability avoidance? The second area will be looking at what comprises “due diligence” for safety. What types of actions are careful, prudent and appropriate when a company is on the verge of marketing one of its new ideas or finds out its products in the field have safety problems? Third, what can we learn from the past? What do these examples tell us about future risks, what to look for and how to avoid them? Fourth, are there key questions that should be asked? Is there a methodology that can be used for reducing the number of unknowable risks and for analyzing the foreseeable product safety risks?
Lew is a product safety and liability advisor for companies like Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, CANON, Applied Materials, Zurich Insurance Company, Chubb Insurance and many others. He has been on the faculty of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Safety and Systems Management and University of Wisconsin – Madison. For over 30 years, Lew has helped large and small companies around the world analyze their safety risks and reduce liability. His assignments include risk assessment, warnings and safe design involving a wide variety of products.
He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, an M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering, and a J.D. in Law. Lew is the author of the key texts in this area, “Products Liability: Design and Manufacturing Defects, 2nd Edition”, and the Editor of “Managing for Products Liability Avoidance, 3rd Edition.”
Wednesday Morning
Optical MEMS and NEMS : Thin Film Micro/Nano Machining and Integration
Tuesday Afternoon, April 25 12:10 p.m. -12:50 p.m.
Presenter: Kazuhiro Hane, Tohoku University, Miyagi, Japan
This presentation will give an up-to-date overview of studies on Optical MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) using silicon micromachining technology. Optical laser beam scanners and fiber- optic switches were fabricated by integrating micro-actuators into optical systems. Decreasing the sizes of optical structures, several novel phenomena and devices such as photonic crystals, near-field optics, sub-wavelength effects have been demonstrated. By combining those structures with MEMS, new tunable and valuable functions can be introduced in the photonic structures. Some photonic devices combined with MEMS have been studied. Using nano/micro-fabrication techniques, an integrated probe for the near field scanning optical microscope was fabricated. Images generated by the atomic force and near-field light were obtained simultaneously. Using electron beam lithography, a sub-wavelength grating with a high aspect ratio was fabricated
to decrease the Fresnel reflection of a photo-detector and a light emitting diode. A slab-type photonic crystal combined with MEMS actuator is proposed for optical micro- switches. Furthermore, a self-supporting grating with a period of the order of 100nm is combined with a micro-actuator for a tunable filter using guided-mode resonance. In addition to the results mentioned above, recent progress in optical MEMS and NEMS (Nano Electronic-Mechanical Systems) in Japan will be described.
Kazuhiro Hane received the B.S, M.S and PhD degrees from Nagoya University in Electronics, in 1978, 1980 and 1983, respectively. Since
1994, he has been full professor of the Graduate School of Mechanical Engineering, Tohoku University. He is currently working on Optical MEMS, especially optical micro-sensors and integrated optical systems for telecommunication. He is regional editor for the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.
Wednesday Afternoon
Atmospheric Plasma – Yes or No?
Wednesday Afternoon, April 26
12:10 p.m. –12:50 p.m.
Ladislav Bárdos and Hana Baránková, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
In the last few decades there is a rapidly growing interest in the nonequilibrium (cold) atmospheric plasma systems where expensive vacuum equipment can be eliminated. Successful developments in the atmospheric plasma surface processing particularly those based on Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) and different high frequency discharges seem to suggest that maybe all low-pressure plasma technologies can be replaced by the atmospheric plasma. Indeed, several types of industrial surface treatments by cold atmospheric plasma are very advantageous and considerably simpler than the vacuumbased methods. But there is no reason for throwing away the “old” vacuum equipment. There are several physical and practical limitations where atmospheric plasmas simply cannot compete with the low-pressure plasma. This tutorial is devoted to fundamental principles of generation of the cold atmospheric plasma and understanding different types of atmospheric plasma systems as well as their typical applications. Advantages and limits of the atmospheric plasmas are discussed in more details to give a realistic approach on their feasible applications.
Ladislav Bárdos is an Associate Professor at Uppsala University in Sweden and Project leader of the Plasma group at Angstrom laboratory. He graduated from Czech Technical University in Prague, received his PhD at Institute of Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a Doctor of Science degree from Charles University in Prague. In 1984 he was awarded the Czechoslovak State Prize for outstanding research results in the plasma deposition of thin films. Lad Bardos has more than 30 years of experience in the field of applied plasma. He has published over 100 scientific papers and developed several plasma sources protected by international patents. He runs a consulting company BB Plasma Design AB in Sweden. Lad is instructor of two SVC short courses (C-210 and C-306) and serves as the TAC Co-Chair of Emerging Technologies and “Heuréka!” sessions at the SVC TechCon.