Micromachines, Volume 11, Issue 7

Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are biological fuel cells based on the oxidation of fuels by electrogenic bacteria to generate an electric current in electrochemical cells. There are several methods that can be employed to improve their performance. In t...

We report the design and characterization of a two-photon fluorescence imaging miniature probe. This customized two-axis scanning probe is dedicated for intraoperative two-photon fluorescence imaging endomicroscopic use and is based on a micro-electr...

Fluidized bed machining (FBM) is used for the surface finishing or cleaning of complex 3D machine parts. FBM is a process of injecting air into a chamber to encourage particles into a fluid-like state. Subsequently, FBM involves rotating the specimen...

A polarization beam splitter is an important component of modern optical system, especially a splitter that combines the structural flexibility of photonic crystal fiber and the optical modulation of functional material. Thus, this paper presents a c...

Curvature-induced dielectrophoresis (C-iDEP) is an established method of applying electrical energy gradients across curved microchannels to obtain a label-free manipulation of particles and cells. This method offers several advantages over the other...

Separation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples and subsequent DNA extraction from these cells play a crucial role in cancer research and drug discovery. Microfluidics is a versatile technology that has been applied to create niche so...

Integrating three-dimensional (3D) microelectrodes on microfluidic chips based on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) has been a challenge. This paper introduces a composite 3D electrode composed of Ag powder (particle size of 10 nm) and PDMS. Ethyl acetate...

Assembled water-in-oil droplets bounded by lipid bilayers are used in synthetic biology as minimal models of cell tissue. Microfluidic devices successfully generate monodispersed droplets and assemble them via droplet interface bilayesr (DIB) formati...

A pixel in an electrowetting display (EWD) can be viewed as a confined water/oil two-phase microfluidic system that can be manipulated by applying an electric field. The phenomenon of charge trapping in the protective dielectric and conductivity of t...

Wire electrochemical micromachining (WECMM) technology is regarded a promising method to fabricate high aspect ratio microstructures on hard-to-machining materials, however, the by-product accumulation in the machining gap limits its application. In...

In this paper, a magnetically guided micromanipulation method is proposed to accurately create artistic patterns with magnetic microrobots in a liquid environment for tissue engineering. A magnetically guided device is developed depend on symmetrical...

Ultrasound detection is one of the major components of photoacoustic imaging systems. Advancement in ultrasound transducer technology has a significant impact on the translation of photoacoustic imaging to the clinic. Here, we present an overview on...

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have shown promise in various optical and electrical applications. Among these materials, semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been heavily studied recently for their photodetection and thermoelec...

MEMS switch is a movable device manufactured by means of semiconductor technology, possessing many incomparable advantages such as a small volume, low power consumption, high integration, etc. This paper reviews recent research of MEMS switches, poin...

Homogeneous mixing of microscopic volume fluids at low Reynolds number is of great significance for a wide range of chemical, biological, and medical applications. An efficient jet mixer with arrays of micronozzles was designed and fabricated using a...

The rational-based neuro-transfer function (neuro-TF) method is a popular method for parametric modeling of electromagnetic (EM) behavior of microwave components. However, when the order in the neuro-TF becomes high, the sensitivities of the model re...

Walking on water is made possible, at least for tiny insects, by molecular interaction at the interfaces of dissimilar materials. Impact of these interactions—surface tension (SFT) and, more broadly, interfacial tension (IFT)—is particula...

It is commonly known that the performance of an electrostatic microelectromechanical system (MEMS) device is limited to a specific range of the full gap distance due to the inherited “pull-in instability” phenomenon. In this work, we desi...

With the increased application of ultrasonic motors, it is necessary to put forward higher demand for the adaptability to environment. Impact, as a type of extreme environment, is widespread in weapon systems, machinery and aerospace. However, there...

Distinctive from other forms of microfluidic system, capillary microfluidics is of great interest in autonomous micro-systems due to its well-engineered fluidic control based on capillary force. As an essential component of fluidic control in capilla...

Numerous in vitro studies have been conducted in conventional static cell culture systems. However, most of the results represent an average response from a population of cells regardless of their local microenvironment. A microfluidic probe is a non...

Printable and flexible electronic materials have gained a tremendous amount of interest both in academia and in industry, due to their potential impact in many areas, including advanced manufacturing, healthcare, diagnostics, wearables, renewable ene...

This special issue is a collection of 12 technical papers and two reviews that are expanded into full-length articles from the conference abstracts of the 9th International Multidisciplinary Conference on Optofluidics (IMCO 2019) held in Hong Kong in...

A new cross-channel split-and-recombine (CC-SAR) micro-mixer was proposed, and its performance was demonstrated numerically. A numerical study was carried out over a wide range of volume flow rates from 3.1 μL/min to 826.8 μL/min. The correspon...

Harmonic generation is an attractive research field that finds a variety of application areas. However, harmonic generation within a medium of micron-scale interaction length limits the magnitude of nonlinear coupling and leads to poor harmonic gener...

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is a novel technology utilizing biocompatible materials, cells, drugs, etc. as basic microcomponents to form 3D artificial structures and is believed as a promising method for regenerative medicine. Droplet-based bi...

Cross-scale self-similar hierarchical micro–nano structures in living systems often provide unique features on surfaces and serve as inspiration sources for artificial materials or devices. For instance, a highly self-similar structure often ha...

Advances in miniaturization of sensors, actuators, and smart systems are receiving substantial industrial attention, and a wide variety of transducers are commercially available or possess high potential to impact emerging markets [...]

Engineered blood vessels generally recapitulate vascular function in vitro and can be utilized in drug discovery as a novel microphysiological system. Recently, various methods to fabricate vascular models in hydrogels have been reported to study the...

Photoacoustic (PA) detection of H₂ and NH₃ using plasmonic excitation in Pt- and Pd-decorated GaN piezotransistive microcantilevers were investigated using pulsed 520-nm laser illumination. The sensing performances of 1-nm Pt and Pd nanoparticle (NP)...

Currently, inkjet printing conductive films have attracted more and more attention in the field of electronic device. Here, the inkjet-printed silver thin films based on nanoparticles (NP) ink and metal-organic decomposition (MOD) ink were cured by t...

Tungsten cemented carbide (WC-Co) is a widely applied material in micro-hole drilling, such as in suction nozzles, injection nozzles, and wire drawing dies, owing to its high wear resistance and hardness. Since the development of wire-electro-dischar...

We characterize an affordable method of producing stencils for submillimeter physical vapor deposition (PVD) by using paper and a benchtop laser cutter. Patterning electrodes or similar features on top of organic or biological substrates is generally...

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Ultrafast non-diffractive Bessel laser beams provide strong light confinement and show robust advantages for fabricating high-aspect-ratio nanoscale structures inside transparent materials. They take the form of nanoscale voids with typical diameters...

We present a wearable device built on an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express (CPE) board and integrated with a photoplethysmographic (PPG) optical sensor for heart rate monitoring and multiple embedded sensors for medical applications—in partic...

Formaldehyde (HCHO), a chemical compound used in the fabrication process of a broad range of household products, is present indoors as an airborne pollutant due to its high volatility caused by its low boiling point ( $T=-19$ °C). M...

In our previous work on ultra-fast silicon detectors, extremely small carrier drift times of 50–100 picoseconds were predicted for electrode spacing of 5–10 μm. Expanding on these previous works, we systematically study the electrical...

Heat exchangers are widely used in many mechanical, electronic, and bioengineering applications at macro and microscale. Among these, the use of heat exchangers consisting of a single fluid passing through a set of geometries at different temperature...

Microfluidic 3D tissue culture systems are attractive for in vitro drug testing applications due to the ability of these platforms to generate 3D tissue models and perform drug testing at a very small scale. However, the minute cell number and liquid...

This article presents in-pixel (of a CMOS image sensor (CIS)) temperature sensors with improved accuracy in the spatial and the temporal domain. The goal of the temperature sensors is to be used to compensate for dark (current) fixed pattern noise (F...

Silicon photonics is an enabling technology that provides integrated photonic devices and systems with low-cost mass manufacturing capability. It has attracted increasing attention in both academia and industry in recent years, not only for its appli...

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have recently been labeled as toxic constituents that exist in many aqueous environments. However, traditional methods used to determine the level of PFASs are often not appropriate for continuous environm...

The regeneration of the mucosal interface of the human intestine is critical in the host–gut microbiome crosstalk associated with gastrointestinal diseases. The biopsy-derived intestinal organoids provide genetic information of patients with ph...

WRe26-In₂O₃ (WRe26 (tungsten-26% rhenium) and In₂O₃ thermoelectric materials) thin film thermocouples (TFTCs) have been fabricated based on magnetron sputtering technology, which can be used in temperature measurement. Many annealing processes were s...

Inflatable soft microactuators typically consist of an elastic material with an internal void that can be inflated to generate a deformation. A crucial feature of these actuators is the shape of ther inflatable void as it determines the bending motio...

This paper focuses on the development of a 3D-printed threadless ball screw (TLBS) for the applications that require miniaturization, customization, and accuracy controllability. To enhance the efficiency of the TLBS, a novel model of the TLBS for an...

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is an important broad-spectrum tumor marker. The quantitative detection of a low concentration of CEA has important medical significance. In this study, three-dimensional porous graphene-oxide-supported platinum metal n...

Collective cell migration is an essential phenomenon in many naturally occurring pathophysiological processes, as well as in tissue engineering applications. Cells in tissues and organs are known to sense chemical and mechanical signals from the micr...

This paper presents a feasibility study of an automated pick-and-place process for ultrathin chips on a standard automatic assembly machine. So far, scientific research about automated assembly of ultrathin chips, with thicknesses less than 50 µ...