Lab Director

James Vlahakis

Lab Director
Tufts Micro/Nanofabrication Lab
Department of Mechanical Engineering

Education

PhD, BS (Mechanical Engineering), Tufts University, 2008, 1988
MS (Mechanical Engineering), Harvard University, 2004

Bio

James Vlahakis earned his PhD and BS in mechanical engineering from Tufts University and his MS in mechanical engineering from Harvard. He returned to Tufts from his role as a process development engineer at Intel Corp. He has experience in academic, industrial and government environments, in a number of areas – micro and nano fabrication, ion beam operations and applications and medical device testing and regulation. The Tufts Micro/Nano Fabrication Lab is a multi-user, multi-PI, multi department core facility that enables micro/nano scale research for all Tufts campuses and Dr. Vlahakis is responsible for all operational aspects of the facility. In addition, he regularly contributes to micro/nano research programs that cross numerous fields – flexible devices, MEMS sensors, bio-optics, etc.

Research Interests

Dr. Vlahakis' research interests include:

Micro/nano fabrication, with a particular focus on process development
Chemical mechanical planarization and tribology
Surface science
Ion beam application

Professional Positions

2013-present Lab Manager/Researcher, Tufts Micro/Nano Fabrication Lab
2011-2013 Lab Manager, Tufts Micro/Nano Fabrication Lab
2010-2011 Process Development Engineer, Intel Corp.
2004-2008 Research Associate, Tufts Univ. Future Technologies Lab
1995-2003 Operations Engineer, Harvard Cyclotron Lab/Massachusetts General Hospital
1991-1994 Information Technology Specialist, MacTemps
1989-1991 Medical Device Engineer, Food & Drug Administration

Honors, Awards & Invited Talks

2008 Invited Lecturer, Advances in CMP, MIT Lincoln Labs
2006 Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation CMP-MIC
2006 Invited Lecturer, In Situ Metrology for CMP, CMP-MIC
2005 Student Advisor, Bringing Engineers into New Disciplines, Summer Program
2004 Research Assistantship, awarded by Tufts Mechanical Engineering Department

Publications

Sabarirajan, et-al, "Atomic Layer Deposition of Pt Nanoelectric Array for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells", Journal of the Electrochemical Society, under review.

A. Molaei, J. Heredia-Juesas, G. Ghazi, J. Vlahakis and J. Martinez-Lorenzo, "Digitized Metamaterial Absorber-based Compressive Reflector Antenna for High Sensing Capacity Imaging", IEEE Access, Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2881103.

Ligonde, Gardy K., Torres, Daniela A., Abboud, Eric F., Sung, Wang-Kyun, Vlahakis, J., Banfield D. J., and White, R. D., "Capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducers for acoustic anemometry on Mars", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141(5):3722-3722, May 2017.

Sabarirajan, Vlahakis, White, and Zenyuk, "Electrochemical Characterization of Free-Standing Platinum Nanoelectrode Array Using Atomic Layer Deposition for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells", ECS Transactions, 75(14):747-755, September 2017.

Kelley, P., Saigal, A., Vlahakis, J., Carter, A., "Tensile and Fatigue Behavior of Direct Metal Laser Sintered Inconel 718," ASME International Congress and Exposition 2015.

Beyer, G., Finkelman, M., Harsono, Vlahakis, J., M., Kugel, G., Perry, R., "Assessing Surface Roughness on Composite Restorations Using Differing Abrasive Products", International Association of Dental Research, Proceedings, 2013.

Metallo, C., Trimmer B., Vlahakis J., "Flexible Parylene-Based Multi Electrode Arrays for Surface EMG Recordings from Facial Muscles", IEEE Conference for Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 2012.

Vlahakis, J., Manno, V. P., Rogers, C. B., and White, R. "Stick-Slip Transitions in Chemical Mechanical Planarization", Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters, 13(6), H206-H208, 2010.

Vlahakis, J., Rogers, C., Manno, V., White, R., Moinpur, M., Hooper, D., and Anjur, S., "Synchronous, In Situ Measurements in Chemical Mechanical Planarization", Journal of the Electrochemical Society, 156 (10), H794-H802, 2009.

Shin, M., Vlahakis, J., Manno, V. P., Rogers, C. B., Paul, E., Moinpour, M., Hooper, D., and White, R. D. "In Situ Metrology for Glass and Copper CMP" in Proceedings of the International Conference on Planarization/CMP Technology, ICPT 2009, Fukuoka, Japan, Nov. 19-21, 2009.

White, R., Vlahakis, J., Gray, C., Manno, V., Braun, N., Gauthier, D., Mueller, A., Rogers, C. and Moinpour, M. "In Situ Characterization of the Mechanical Aspects of CMP" in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Planarization/CMP Technology 2008, Hsinchu, Taiwan, November 10-12, 2008.

N. Braun, C. Gray, A. Mueller, J. Vlahakis, D. Gauthier, V. P. Manno, C. Rogers, R. White, S. Anjur, M. Moinpour. "In-Situ Investigation of Wafer-Slurry-Pad Interactions during CMP" in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Planarization/CMP Technology, Dresden, Germany, October 25-27, 2007.