Micromachines, Volume 8, Issue 4

Biomedical coatings are used to promote the wear resistance and the biocompatibility of a mechanical heart valve. An orbital shaking test was proposed to assess the durability of the coatings by the amount material eroded by the surrounding fluid. Ho...

In this paper, we review the current development of stencil lithography for scalable micro- and nanomanufacturing as a resistless and reusable patterning technique. We first introduce the motivation and advantages of stencil lithography for large-are...

Insufficient sensitivity is a general issue of colorimetric paper-based analytical devices (PADs) for trace analyte detection, such as metal ions, in environmental water. This paper demonstrates the colorimetric detection of zinc ions (Zn²⁺) on a pap...

Enzymes are extremely valuable tools for industrial, environmental, and biotechnological applications and there is a constant need for improving existing biological catalysts and for discovering new ones. Screening microbe or gene libraries is an eff...

The 2016 International Symposium of Flexible and Stretchable Electronics (ISFSE2016), co-sponsored by the Flexible Electronics Research Center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) & State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing a...

A novel micromanipulation technique of multi-objectives based on vibrating bubbles in an open chip environment is described in this paper. Bubbles were created in an aqueous medium by the thermal energy converted from a laser. When the piezoelectric...

In order to identify the influence of the vacuum environment on the performance of a comb-drive microscanner, and indicate the optimum pressure for enhancing its performance, a comb-drive microscanner fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrat...

Robust and inexpensive dry adhesives would have a multitude of potential applications, but replicating the impressive adhesive organs of many small animals has proved challenging. A substantial body of work has been produced in recent years which has...

It is meaningful to study the surface morphology of monocrystalline material, but there are few studies on the surface roughness of quartz. So, surface roughness of Z-cut quartz etched by pure ammonium bifluoride and ammonium bifluoride mixed with is...

Many unique chemical compounds and nanomaterials are being developed, and each one requires a considerable range of in vitro and/or in vivo toxicity screening in order to evaluate their safety. The current methodology of in vitro toxicological screen...

The double-faced Janus micro-motor, which utilizes the heterogeneity between its two hemispheres to generate self-propulsion, has shown great potential in water cleaning, drug delivery in micro/nanofluidics, and provision of power for a novel micro-r...

Localized single cells can be lysed precisely and selectively using microbubbles optothermally generated by microsecond laser pulses. The shear stress from the microstreaming surrounding laser-induced microbubbles and direct contact with the surface...

A micro scanning mirror is an optical device used to scan laser beams which can be used for Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) in applications like unmanned driving or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The MEMS scanning mirror’s light-weight and low-po...

In this work, we proposed a novel design of a microfluidic mixer utilizing the amplified Marangoni chaotic advection induced by alternating current (AC) continuous electrowetting of a metal droplet situated in electrolyte solution, due to the linear...

This paper presents a transformer-based power divider with six-port suspending structure for 2.4 GHz wireless applications. The proposed power divider, which is featured with chip size (2.9 mm × 2.8 mm × 21 μm), was constructed by an 8-μm-thick Cu bo...

We developed a highly sensitive humidity sensor based on the combination of ultrahigh-frequency film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) and nano-assembled polyelectrolyte (PET) thin films. The water molecule absorption efficiency was optimized by forming...

Micro plasma devices (MPD) with power gains are of interest in applications involving operations in the presence of ionizing radiations, in propulsion, in control, amplification of high power electromagnetic waves, and in metamaterials for energy man...

Piezoelectric actuator (PEA) is an ideal microscale and nanoscale actuator because of its ultra-precision positioning resolution. However, the inherent hysteretic nonlinearity significantly degrades the PEA’s accuracy. The measured hysteresis of PEA...

In this paper, we propose a helical piezoelectric energy harvester, examine its application to clothes in the form of an energy harvesting garment, and analyze its design and characteristics. The helical harvester is composed of an elastic core and a...

By modification of glasses with ultrafast laser radiation and subsequent wet-chemical etching (here named SLE = selective laser-induced etching), precise 3D structures have been produced, especially in quartz glass (fused silica), for more than a dec...

The design of a micromirror for biomedical applications requires multiple output responses to be optimized, given a set of performance parameters and constraints. This paper presents the parametric design optimization of an electrothermally actuated...

We have been developing a wireless sensor network system to monitor the quality of lake water in real time. It consists of a sensor module and a system module, which includes communication and power modules. We have focused on pH, turbidity and chlor...

The rapid emergence of antimicrobial resistant bacteria requires the development of new diagnostic tests. Nucleic acid-based assays determine antimicrobial susceptibility by detecting genes that encode for the resistance. In this study, we demonstrat...

Herein we describe the vibration of a thin nickel film-coated microcantilever at resonance under an external magnetic field. The resonance frequency and the mechanical loss—experimentally observed while varying the magnetic field—closely follow the f...

Reliable operation of a miniaturized mechanical system requires that nanomechanical motion be transduced into electrical signals (and vice versa) with high fidelity and in a robust manner. Progress in transducer technologies is expected to impact num...

The surge in popularity of lab-on-chip applications has set a new challenge for the fabrication of prototyping devices, such as electrokinetic devices. In such devices, a micro-electrode is the key component. Currently, microelectromechanical systems...

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the fabrication of complex high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) architectures at micro/nanoscale. These architectures can be obtained through conventional microfabrication methods...

We present a novel electroosmotic micromixer that consists of arrays of direct current (DC) asymmetric electrode and asymmetric lateral structures. By embedding asymmetric electrode arrays on the top and bottom walls of a rectangular microchannel app...

Aerogels—solid materials keeping their internal structure of interconnected submicron-sized pores intact upon exchanging the pore liquid with a gas—were first synthesized in 1932 by Samuel Kistler. Overall, an aerogel is a special form of a highly po...

This paper describes a paper-based colorimetric biosensor for measuring glucose concentration levels in human tear samples. Colorimetric biosensors were wax printed on paper platforms and modified with chitosan previously prepared in acetic acid. The...

Extensive research efforts have been devoted to understand the complex mechanisms of wear with the aim to minimize wear in sliding systems. Improvements in the instruments used for the characterization of the wear phenomenon are required to enhance t...

One of the main objectives of 3D printing in health science is to mimic biological functions. To reach this goal, a 4D printing might be added to 3D-printed objects which will be characterized by their abilities to evolve over time and under external...

The ability to create complex three-dimensional microstructures has reached an unprecedented level of sophistication in the last 15 years. For the most part, this is the result of a steady development of the additive manufacturing technique named two...

Red blood cell responses during a long-standing load were experimentally investigated. With a high-speed camera and a high-speed actuator, we were able to manipulate cells staying inside a microfluidic constriction, and each cell was compressed due t...

Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) have emerged as viable multiplexable platforms with the potential to transcend existing analytical techniques in resource-limited settings. µPADs are fabricated by patterning hydrophobic materials o...

In the study, we improved the near-field electrospinning (NFES) by multi-spinnerets with a cylindrical collector to fabricate a large area permanent piezoelectric of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) fibers array. We designed multi-spinnerets by using p...

A three-dimensional (3D) tissue model has significant advantages over the conventional two-dimensional (2D) model. A 3D model mimics the relevant in-vivo physiological conditions, allowing a cell culture to serve as an effective tool for drug discove...

A two-dimensional (2D) magnetic field sensor consisting of four silicon magnetic sensitive transistors (SMSTs) with similar characteristics is presented in this paper. By use of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and integrated packaging technolo...

Damage to mechanical components caused by wear is considered to be an important issue for mechanical engineers. For the purpose of wear resistance, it is necessary to improve the material properties of the mechanical elements. Furthermore, low fricti...