About

Victor M. Bright is a Professor and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Micro/Nanoscale at the University of Colorado Boulder, within the Paul M. Rady Mechanical Engineering department. His research interests focus on Micro and Nanoelectromechanical Systems. He is associated with multiple departments including Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Chemical & Biological Engineering, Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering, and others. His professional role involves advancing research in micro and nanoscale systems, contributing to the university's engineering initiatives, and collaborating with various affiliates and partners such as the ATLAS Institute, the Center for Technology Workforce Innovation, and the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society.

Research topics

• Chemical engineering
• Chemistry
• Materials science
• Nanotechnology
• Chromatography
• Polymer chemistry
• Composite material
• Optics

Selected publications

• Fabrication and Packaging of Electrowetting LENS/PRISM Elements

  2026-01-25

  articleSenior author

  A packaged electrowetting-based element with tunable lens and prism capability is demonstrated. Laser micromachining is used to pattern individually addressable electrodes on a sloped wall glass substrate, and the working liquids are sealed in the device using commercially available epoxies. The device operates in lens and prism modes with focal length tunability, diverging from −14 mm to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\infty$</tex> and converging from +14 mm to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\infty$</tex>, while providing <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\pm 4.5^{\circ}$</tex> beam steering capability.

  PublisherDOI

• Film and surface stress during Al2O3 thermal atomic layer etching using <i>in situ</i> wafer curvature measurements

  Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A Vacuum Surfaces and Films · 2026-04-28

  article

  In situ wafer curvature measurements were employed to monitor film and surface stress during Al2O3 thermal atomic layer etching (ALE). The Al2O3 thermal ALE was performed using fluorination and ligand-exchange reactions using sequential hydrogen fluoride (HF) and trimethylaluminum [TMA, Al(CH3)3] exposures at temperatures from 250 to 300 °C. The initial Al2O3 films were grown using Al2O3 atomic layer deposition (ALD) with TMA and H2O as the reactants. These Al2O3 ALD films are known to be under tensile stress. The progressive decrease in stress-thickness versus Al2O3 thermal ALE cycles was consistent with the linear removal of the Al2O3 ALD film that contains tensile stress. The results indicated that ALE can be used as a layer removal method to determine the stress distribution in a thin film. The reduction of the stress-thickness by Al2O3 thermal ALE at 250, 275, and 300 °C was consistent with the Al2O3 etch rates at these temperatures. Surface stresses corresponding to the fluorination and ligand-exchange reactions were also monitored during Al2O3 thermal ALE. The TMA reaction resulted in an average negative stress-thickness change of −0.50 ± 0.07 N/m that was consistent with a compressive surface stress. This negative stress-thickness change was attributed to repulsive interactions between surface methyl groups. The subsequent HF reaction then produced a positive stress-thickness change by releasing the compressive stress from the TMA reaction. The fluorination of the initial Al2O3 ALD film by HF led to a negative stress-thickness change that was consistent with a gain in compressive stress. The amount of this negative stress-thickness change depended on the thickness of the initial Al2O3 ALD film. The average negative stress-thickness change of −0.52 ± 0.08 N/m after &amp;gt;8 Al2O3 ALD cycles suggested that the fluorination depth during HF exposure to Al2O3 was approximately 9–10 Å.

  PublisherDOI

• Film and surface stress during Al2O3 and AlF3 atomic layer deposition using in situ wafer curvature measurements

  Applied Surface Science · 2025-12-20 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy: Real-Time In-Situ Physical and Chemical Characterization of Reverse Osmosis Desalination Membrane Scaling

  Environmental Science & Technology · 2025-12-16

  articleOpen access

  We introduce a stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) methodology designed for rapid, real-time, and in situ monitoring of RO membrane scaling adapted for bench-scale desalination flow cells. The methodology can provide new insights into membrane scaling dynamics by offering time-resolved reflection imaging of inorganic crystal growth, coupled with chemical identification from Raman spectral data. These capabilities allow for direct local measurement of the membrane surface area covered by different scalants as well as an approximation of the scalant volume using three-dimensional, integrated Raman intensity. The 2D and 3D SRS results obtained from CaSO4 scaling experiments are compared to and are in reasonable agreement with those provided by confocal microscopy. The real-time physical and chemical characterization capabilities presented here could be extended to study combinations of inorganic, organic, and biological fouling. Overall, the SRS methodology represents an advancement in real-time sensing of membrane fouling that offers the potential for improved operation, lower cost, and more resilient RO membrane systems for sustainable water management.

  PublisherDOI

• Two-dimensional dynamic scanning utilizing electrowetting tunable prisms

  Optics Express · 2025-07-18

  articleOpen access

  We present a numerical and experimental investigation into the dynamics of two-dimensional electrowetting prism scanners. These scanners are an attractive option as they are transmissive, miniaturizable, nonmechanical and consume little power. We characterize the resonant frequencies of an electrowetting tunable prism for one-dimensional beam steering and find close agreement between simulation and experiment. The resonance frequencies are shown to produce an inherent standing wave resonance mode on the liquid-liquid interface that proves beneficial for linear performance. We extend our results to analyze two-dimensional raster scanning performance by driving the device on- and off-resonance modes. To validate the improvement in performance, we integrate the electrowetting prism into a two-photon laser scanning microscope as an optical scanner for fluorescence imaging.

  PublisherDOI

• Miniaturized widefield microscope for high speed in vivo voltage imaging

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-08-06

  preprintOpen access

  Functional imaging in freely moving animals with genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) will open new capabilities for neuroscientists to study the behavioral relevance of neural activity with high spatial and temporal precision. However, miniaturization of an imaging system with sufficient collection efficiency to resolve the small changes in fluorescence yield from voltage spikes, as well as development of efficient image sensors that are sufficiently fast to capture them, has proven challenging. We present a miniaturized microscope designed for voltage imaging, with a numerical aperture of 0.6, 250 μm field of view and 1.3 mm working distance that weighs 16.4 g. We show it is capable of imaging in vivo voltage spikes from Voltron2 with a spike peak-to-noise ratio >3 at a framerate of 530 Hz.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Calcium Imaging Using a Miniature Structured Illumination Microscope

  2025-06-23

  article

  Widefield miniature microscopes enable neuroscience researchers to record neuronal activity in freely moving animals. However, these devices are limited to poor signal-to-background ratio (SBR) due to the lack of optical sectioning capability. In previous work, our group developed a miniature structured illumination microscope (SIMScope3D) that uses periodic structured illumination (SI) to overcome this limitation [1]. The SIMScope3D can provide optically sectioned recordings with an axial resolution of 18 μm but was limited to recordings of slow temporal dynamics using traditional OS-SIM reconstruction algorithms [2], [3]. In recent work, our group demonstrated a technique that applies HiLo reconstruction, which is more robust for time-dependent signals, using three periodic SI patterns [3], [4]. Pseudo-HiLo (pHiLo) enables a more accurate reconstruction of time-dependent signals with reduced noise compared to OS-SIM [3]. In this work, we utilize the SIMScope3D to record calcium activity from cells expressing GCaMP6f in the CA1 hippocampal region. We perform pseudo-Widefield (pWF), OS-SIM and pHiLo reconstructions and compare the fidelity of extracted ΔF/F time courses. Results indicate that the optical sectioning capabilities of the SIMScope3D may be extended to recordings of functional calcium activity, expanding the toolkit for researchers who utilize miniature microscopes for experiments with freely moving animals. Further development of sensitive, high-speed cameras, combined with advances in image reconstruction algorithms, will provide the groundwork for future experiments that utilize genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) with freely moving animals.

  PublisherDOI

• Wobulation using a tunable electrowetting prism applied to structured illumination microscopy

  Applied Physics Letters · 2025-09-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Sub-pixel shifting technologies are attractive for enhancing the resolution of cameras and projectors. Conventional techniques, such as wobulation and pixel shift, rely on mechanical moving parts or cumbersome optical systems. As a solution, we demonstrate "electrowetting wobulation," in which a tunable electrowetting prism is used to laterally shift a projected image. This technique overcomes challenges of other pixel shifting techniques, as the electrowetting prism is transmissive, can achieve high framerates, and has no mechanical moving parts. We apply electrowetting wobulation to an optical sectioning structured illumination microscope and demonstrate lateral shifting of a structured pattern while maintaining optical sectioning, which requires high quality images. We characterize the optical sectioning strength across multiple spatial frequencies, as well as demonstrate enhanced sectioning in an autofluorescent pollen grain, and find electrowetting wobulation is a promising technology to improve the resolution of conventional imaging systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bottom‐emitting striped microLED array light source for uniform optical sectioning structured illumination microscopy

  Journal of the Society for Information Display · 2025-04-06

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We demonstrate a microLED light source for optical sectioning structured illumination microscopy (OS‐SIM). A bottom‐emitting design is employed to improve the uniformity and intensity of emission by removing the anode contact from the optical path. This design facilitates the addition of a potential equalizing and light‐reflecting layer to the top surface of the light source. The irradiance, uniformity of light emission, and contrast ratio of the light source are characterized. A system demonstration is performed with the light source integrated into a fluorescence microscope and used for OS‐SIM imaging.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Miniaturized widefield microscope for high speed in vivo voltage imaging

  Biomedical Optics Express · 2025-10-30 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Functional imaging in freely moving animals with genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) will open new capabilities for neuroscientists to study the behavioral relevance of neural activity with high spatial and temporal precision. However, miniaturization of an imaging system with sufficient collection efficiency to resolve the small changes in fluorescence yield from voltage spikes, as well as the development of efficient image sensors that are sufficiently fast to capture them, has proven challenging. We present a miniaturized microscope designed for voltage imaging, with a numerical aperture of 0.6, a 250 µm field of view, and a 1.3-1.6 mm working distance that weighs 16.4 g. We show it is capable of imaging in vivo voltage spikes from Voltron2 with a spike peak-to-noise ratio &gt;3 at a framerate of 530 Hz.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Joseph J. Brown

  University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

  91 shared

• Juliet T. Gopinath

  66 shared

• Camille Larue

  Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

  62 shared

• Siavash Pourkamali

  62 shared

• Marie Carrière

  62 shared

• Steven A. Curley

  59 shared

• Carsten Rockstuhl

  Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

  58 shared

• Audrey M. Chamoire

  58 shared