QAMSS Lecture: Shaping Fused Silica Glass Like a Polymer for Microfluidic, Packaging and Resonator Applications

Image caption: Applications of fully sintered fused glass devices: plasma-in-a-chip (top two), microfluidic gas chamber integrated with resistive graphene sensor (middle left), double paddle oscillator (middle right), and 3D hemispherical and cylindrical shell resonators (bottom two). Image credit: Dr. Jingqin Mao, Dr. Yahya Atwa and Dr Sabitha Ann Jose.

Fused silica glass offers exceptional optical, thermal, chemical and mechanical properties; however, its high hardness, elevated melting temperature and processing complexity have historically limited its use in microfabrication. Recent advances in printable and mouldable silica nanocomposites now enable fused silica to be shaped like a polymer, allowing fabrication of complex 3D structures that can be subsequently converted into dense, transparent glass through thermal processing.

This talk presents a simple fabrication route for fused silica components suitable for microfluidic devices, packaging and high-Q mechanical resonators. By combining polymer-like processing with the final performance of fused silica, this approach opens new opportunities for compact, robust and scalable fused silica glass-based devices.

Attend this talk to:

• Understand how pure fused silica glass can be processed like a polymer.
• Explore the different applications of sintered glass, especially for chemical sensors and mechanical resonators.
• Identify the existing challenges related to surface roughness and bubble formation during processing.

About the speaker

Dr. Hamza Shakee is a reader at the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB). He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, USA (2015), where he specialised in micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology based chemical sensors. After completing his doctoral studies, Dr. Shakeel went on to work as a post-doctoral associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA (2017), where he focused on utilising MEMS oscillators for metrology applications. His research expertise encompasses the development of sensors/sensing platforms for inertial, environmental and biomedical applications.

He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and holds a US patent related to chemical sensors. His projects have received a total funding over £10M. He is currently associate editor of IEEE Sensors Letters and previously served as associate editor of Nanotechnology and Precision Engineering Journal. He is also leading the eFutures Network plus project and made contributions to the UK’s Academic Semiconductor Landscape report.