Micromachines, Volume 10, Issue 3

Gallium-based liquid metal alloys have been attracting attention from both industry and academia as soft, deformable, reconfigurable and multifunctional materials in microfluidic, electronic and electromagnetic devices. Although various technologies...

This paper proposes a high-strain sensitivity turning dynamometer that combines several thin-film resistor grids into three Wheatstone full-bridge circuits that can measure triaxial cutting forces. This dynamometer can replace different cutter heads...

Piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting (pVEH) microdevices can convert the mechanical vibrations to electrical voltages. In the future, these microdevices can provide an alternative to replace the electrochemical batteries, which cause contaminati...

A novel piezoelectric energy harvester with multi-resonant frequencies based on Li-doped ZnO (LZO) thin films is proposed in this paper, consisting of an elastic element with three (or more) different length cantilever beam arrays and a piezoelectric...

While conventional group IV or III-V based device technologies have reached their technical limitations (e [...]

Currently, the demand for surface treatment methods like plasma electrolytic polishing (PeP)—a special case of electrochemical machining—is increasing. This paper provides a literature review on the fundamental mechanisms of the plasma el...

Metastatic cancer cells are known to have a smaller cell stiffness than healthy cells because the small stiffness is beneficial for passing through the extracellular matrix when the cancer cells instigate a metastatic process. Here we developed a sim...

The artificial compound eye (ACE) structure is a new type of miniaturized, lightweight and intelligent imaging system. This paper has proposed to design a multi-spectral ACE structure to enable the structure to achieve multi-spectral information on t...

Silver nanowires (AgNW) have excellent electrical conductivity, transparency, and flexing endurance, and are broadly used in flexible electrodes and flexible sensors. This study mixed the silver nanowires and polyimide (PI) polymer using an in situ s...

Following the fast development of microfluidics over the last decade, the need for methods for mixing two gases in flow at an overall flow rate ranging from 1 to 100 NmL·min⁻¹ with programmable mixing ratios has been quickly increasing i...

Fog harvesting of the Namib desert beetles has inspired many researchers to design artificial fog harvesting hybrid surfaces, which commonly involve flat hydrophilic patterns on hydrophobic surfaces. However, relatively less interest has been shown i...

Many strategies have been developed for the synthesis of silicon carbide (SiC) thin films on silicon (Si) substrates by plasma-based deposition techniques, especially plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and magnetron sputtering, due to...

During the last 30 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a gradual increase in the number of patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD), not only in developed but also in developing countries. In particular, acute myocardial infarction...

The result of molecular diagnostic and detection greatly dependent on the quality and integrity of the isolated nucleic acid. In this work, we developed an automated miniaturized nucleic acid extraction device based on magnetic beads method, consisti...

The deformability of a red blood cell (RBC) is one of the most important biological parameters affecting blood flow, both in large arteries and in the microcirculation, and hence it can be used to quantify the cell state. Despite numerous studies on...

Wirelessly powered medical microrobots are often driven or localized by magnetic resonance imaging coils, whose signal-to-noise ratio is easily affected by the power transmitter coils that supply the microrobot. A controlled single-sided wireless pow...

The formation of serrated chips is an important feature during machining of difficult-to-cut materials, such as titanium alloy, nickel based alloy, and some steels. In this study, Ti6Al4V alloys with equiaxial and acicular martensitic microstructures...

Indoor navigation has been developing rapidly over the last few years. However, it still faces a number of challenges and practical issues. This paper proposes a novel WiFi/MEMS integration structure for indoor navigation. The two-stage structure use...

This study established a microfluidic chip for the capture of A549 human lung circulating tumor cells via the aptamer-conjugated self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) in the channel. AuNPs are among the most attractive nanomate...

Through combining P-type iterative learning (IL) control, model-free adaptive (MFA) control and sliding mode (SM) control, a robust model-free adaptive iterative learning (MFA-IL) control approach is presented for the active vibration control of piez...

A simple deep-ultraviolet (UV) absorption spectrophotometer based on ultraviolet light-emitting diode (UV LED) was developed for the detection of air-borne toluene with a good sensitivity. A fiber-coupled deep UV-LED was employed as a light source, a...

The optical performance of a periodically tunable plasma perfect metamaterial absorber based on a square-square-circle array we propose in the terahertz region is analyzed in this work by the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. We not only d...

Many researchers have fabricated micro and nanofluidic devices incorporating optical, chemical, and electrical detection systems with the aim of achieving on-chip analysis of macromolecules. The present study demonstrates a label-free detection of DN...

Microfluidic systems have witnessed rapid development in recent years. As one of the most common structures, the micro-orifice is always included inside microfluidic systems. Hydrodynamic cavitation in the micro-orifice has been experimentally discov...

Forceps are essential tools for digital nerve manipulation during digital nerve repair surgery. However, surgeons have to operate forceps with extreme caution to prevent detrimental post-operative complications caused by over-gripping force. Their in...

Fabrication of microfluidic devices by soft lithography is by far the most popular approach due to simplicity and low cost. In this approach PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) is cast on a photoresist master to generate replicas that are then sealed against...

We study the effect of etching depth on the threshold characteristics of GaSb-based middle infrared (Mid-IR) photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs) with different lattice periods. The below-threshold emission spectra are measured to identi...

Massive efforts to develop neural interfaces have been made for controlling prosthetic limbs according to the will of the patient, with the ultimate goal being long-term implantation. One of the major struggles is that the electrode’s performan...

We describe an original integration technological platform for the miniaturization of micromachined on-chip optical microscopes, such as the laser scanning confocal microscope. The platform employs the multi-wafer vertical integration approach, combi...

This study presents a new microelectromechanical system, a vibration ring gyroscope with a double U-beam (DUVRG), which was designed using a combination of mathematical analysis and the finite element method. First, a ring vibration resonator with ei...

In this work, a compact gas chromatograph prototype for near real-time benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX) detection at sub-ppb levels has been developed. The system is composed of an aluminium preconcentrator (PC) filled with Basolite...

The food industry is increasingly demanding in terms of the quality and appearance of its product packages. The present study focuses on identifying the main wear mechanisms developed during the stamping process of these packages. During the stamping...

Hysteresis behaviors exist in piezoelectric ceramics actuators (PCAs), which degrade the positioning accuracy badly. The classical Bouc–Wen (CB–W) model is mainly used for describing rate-independent hysteresis behaviors. However, it cann...

The multiring disk resonator gyroscope (DRG) has been a candidate for high performance gyroscopes, however nowadays the finite element method (FEM) is the main method for its analysis due to its complex structure. In this paper we propose a new metho...

A key aspect of microfluidic processes is their ability to perform chemical reactions in small volumes under continuous flow. However, a continuous process requires stable reagent flow over a prolonged period. This can be challenging in microfluidic...

Smartphone-based technologies for medical imaging purposes are limited, especially when it involves the measurement of physiological information of the tissues. Herein, a smartphone-based near-infrared (NIR) imaging device was developed to measure ph...

Here, the researchers carried out an experimental analysis of the effect of the TiO₂ nanosolution concentration on the heat transfer of the twin jet impingement on an aluminum plate surface. We used three different heat transfer enhancement processes...

Superhydrophobic surfaces have attracted extensive attention over the last few decades. It is mainly due to their capabilities of providing several interesting functions, such as self-cleaning, corrosion resistance, anti-icing and drag reduction. Nan...

The mixing process of two pressure driven steady-state rarefied gas streams flowing between two parallel plates was investigated via DSMC (Direct Simulation Monte Carlo) for different combinations of gases. The distance from the inlet, where the asso...

Helical microswimmers have been involved in a wide variety of applications, ranging from in vivo tasks such as targeted drug delivery to in vitro tasks such as transporting micro objects. Over the past decades, a number of studies have been establish...

The generation of concentration gradients is an essential part of a wide range of laboratory settings. However, the task usually requires tedious and repetitive steps and it is difficult to generate concentration gradients at once. Here, we present a...

The quality of electrohydrodynamic jet (e-jet) printing is crucially influenced by the satellite drop formed when the primary drop detaches from the meniscus. If the satellite drop falls onto the substrate, the patterns on the substrate will be conta...

A method was developed to pattern the surface of perfluorinated materials with graphene oxide thin film, and various biological applications of the patterned perfluorinated surface were illustrated. Perfluorinated surfaces such as Teflon, Cytop, and...

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have established themselves within various fields dominated by high-precision micromanipulation, with the most distinguished sectors being the microassembly, micromanufacturing and biomedical ones. This paper pre...

The development of miniaturized devices for studying zebrafish embryos has been limited due to complicated fabrication and operation processes. Here, we reported on a microfluidic device that enabled the capture and culture of zebrafish embryos and r...

Small volume changes are important factors that restrict the improvement of the performance of a piezoelectric diaphragm pump. In order to increase the volume change of the pump chamber, a square piezoelectric vibrator with a flexible support is prop...

Piezoelectric arrays are widely used in non-destructive detecting, medical imaging and therapy. However, limited by traditional manufacturing methods, the array’s element is usually designed in simple geometry such as a cube or rectangle, restricting...

In this paper, a combined numerical and experimental approach for the estimation of the average friction factor along adiabatic microchannels with compressible gas flows is presented. Pressure-drop experiments are performed for a rectangular microcha...

Optical filters have been adopted in many applications such as reconfigurable telecommunication switches, tunable lasers and spectral imaging. However, most of commercialized filters based on a micro-electrical-mechanical system (MEMS) only provide a...

ZnO nanorods have been grown on the surface of foamed nickel by a two-step method. Firstly, a layer of ZnO seed is sputtered on the surface of the foamed nickel by magnetron sputtering, and then the hydrothermal method is used to grow ZnO nanorods at...