Micromachines, Volume 9, Issue 11

Three-dimensional (3D) printing has revolutionized the microfabrication prototyping workflow over the past few years. [...]

It is challenging to evaluate constitutive behaviour by using conventional uniaxial tests for materials with limited sizes, considering the miniaturization trend of integrated circuits in electronic devices. An instrumented nanoindentation approach i...

Based on the premise “anything thin is flexible”, the field of flexible electronics has been fueled from the ever-evolving advances in thin-film materials and devices. [...]

In a new E-nose development, the sensor array needs to be optimized to have enough sensitivity and selectivity for gas/odor classification in the application. The development process includes the preparation of gas sensitive materials, gas sensor fab...

Adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) were suggested for treating degenerative osteoarthritis, suppressing inflammatory responses, and repairing damaged soft tissues. Moreover, the ADSCs have the potential to undergo self-renewal and differentiate into...

Passivation (PV) layers could effectively improve the positive gate bias-stress (PGBS) stability of amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs), whereas the related physical mechanism remains unclear. In this study, SiO₂ or Al₂O₃ films wi...

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) suspended inductors have excellent radio-frequency (RF) performance. The inductance value is one of the main features that characterizes the performance of inductors. It is important to consider the influence of t...

Continuous-flow microreactors are an important development in chemical engineering technology, since pharmaceutical production needs flexibility in reconfiguring the synthesis system rather than large volumes of product yield. Microreactors of this t...

Uniform Lu₂O₃:Eu³⁺ nanowire arrays were successfully prepared by the sol-gel process using anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates. The as-synthesized nanowires are homogeneous, highly ordered, and dense and have a uniform diameter of ~300 nm defined b...

With the continuous advancements in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication technology, inertial sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes can be designed and manufactured with smaller footprint and lower power consumption. In the literatu...

There is an ever-increasing demand for small-size, low-cost, and high-precision positioning systems. Therefore, investigation in this field is performed to search for various solutions that can meet technical requirements of precise multi-degree-of-f...

Water waves are a continuously generated renewable source of energy. However, their random motion and low frequency pose significant challenges for harvesting their energy. Herein, we propose a spherical hybrid triboelectric nanogenerator (SH-TENG) t...

Thin-film transistors (TFTs) have grown into a huge industry due to their broad applications in display, radio-frequency identification tags (RFID), logical calculation, etc. In order to bridge the gap between the fabrication process and the circuit...

Systems and devices for in vitro tissue modelling and engineering are valuable tools, which combine the strength between the controlled laboratory environment and the complex tissue organization and environment in vivo. Device-based tissue engineerin...

We demonstrate a method of neurostimulation using implanted, free-floating, inter-neural diodes. They are activated by volume-conducted, high frequency, alternating current (AC) fields and address the issue of instability caused by interconnect wires...

The precise rotational manipulation of cells and other micrometer-sized biological samples is critical to many applications in biology, medicine, and agriculture. We describe an acoustic-based, on-chip manipulation method that can achieve tunable cel...

Energy harvesting is a method of converting energy from ambient environment into useful electrical energy. Due to the increasing number of sensors and personal electronics, energy harvesting technologies from various sources are gaining attention. Am...

We propose an innovative design of millirobot, which can achieve donor cell suction, delivery, and injection in a mammalian oocyte on a microfluidic chip. The millirobot body contains a hollow space that produces suction and ejection forces for the i...

Soft tissue sticking on electrosurgical scalpels in minimally invasive surgery can increase the difficulty of operation and easily lead to medical malpractice. It is significant to develop new methods for anti-sticking of soft tissue on electrosurgic...

Although the lab-on-a-chip system has been successfully applied in a wide variety of fields, the goal of achieving a cell counter with simple operation, low cost, and high accuracy still attracts continuous research efforts. In this paper, the author...

Paraquat intoxication is characterized by acute kidney injury and multi-organ failure, causing substantial mortality and morbidity. This study aims to develop a 2-in-1 paper-based analytical device to detect the concentrations of paraquat and creatin...

Characterizing the aging processes of electrodes in vivo is essential in order to elucidate the changes of the electrode–tissue interface and the device. However, commonly used impedance measurements at 1 kHz are insufficient for determining el...

This paper presents a microfluidic instrument capable of quantifying single-cell specific intracellular proteins, which are composed of three functioning modules and two software platforms. Under the control of a LabVIEW platform, a pressure module f...

Electroplating process is being used to deposit a relatively thick film of metallic materials for various microsystems applications, such as for the wafer-level bonding sealing frame and as a thermal actuator. Recently, the Al electroplating process...

Radially layered cylindrical piezoceramic/epoxy composite transducers have been designed by integrating the excellent performance of piezoelectric/polymer composites and the radial radiation ability of cylindrical configurations, which are promising...

Mechanical, materials, and biological causes of intracortical probe failure have hampered their utility in basic science and clinical applications. By anticipating causes of failure, we can design a system that will prevent the known causes of failur...

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is a new biomedical imaging technology currently in the spotlight providing a hybrid contrast mechanism and excellent spatial resolution in the biological tissues. It has been extensively studied for preclinical and clinic...

In this paper, a seesaw torsional relay monolithically integrated in a standard 0.35 μm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology is presented. The seesaw relay is fabricated using the Back-End-Of-Line (BEOL) layers available, spec...

Flexible pressure sensors are attracting great interest from researchers and are widely applied in various new electronic equipment because of their distinct characteristics with high flexibility, high sensitivity, and light weight; examples include...

These days, the demand on electronic systems operating at high temperature is increasing owing to bursting interest in applications adaptable to harsh environments on earth, as well as in the unpaved spaces in the universe. However, research on memor...

For some years now, the ever continuing dimensional scaling has no longer been considered to be sufficient for the realization of advanced CMOS devices. Alternative approaches, such as employing new materials and introducing new device architectures,...

This paper describes the innovative design of a three-dimensional (3D) motion device based on a flexible mechanism, which is used primarily to produce accurate and fast micro-displacement. For example, the rapid contact and separation of the tool and...

The effect brought by the I–V kink effect on large signal performance of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) was investigated in this paper. An improved compact model was proposed to accurately characterize the I–V kink e...

Additive manufacturing technology has advantages for realizing complex monolithic structures, providing huge potential for developing advanced flexure mechanisms for precision manipulation. However, the characteristics of flexure hinges fabricated by...

An improved ultrahigh upper gate 4H-SiC metal semiconductor field effect transistor (IUU-MESFET) is proposed in this paper. The structure is obtained by modifying the ultrahigh upper gate height h of the ultrahigh upper gate 4H-SiC metal semiconducto...

Potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP or KH₂PO₄) crystal is widely used as terminal frequency converters in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). However, KDP crystal is a typical difficult-to-cut optical crystal with the characteristic of soft-brittle. I...

In order to investigate the effects of geometric imperfections on the static and dynamic behavior of capacitive micomachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs), the governing equations of motion of a circular microplate with initial defection have been d...

For industrial manufacturing, industrial robots are required to work together with human counterparts on certain special occasions, where human workers share their skills with robots. Intuitive human–robot interaction brings increasing safety c...

This paper presents the design and analysis of a multi degree of freedom (DOF) electro-thermally actuated non-resonant MEMS gyroscope with a 3-DOF drive mode and 1-DOF sense mode system. The 3-DOF drive mode system consists of three masses coupled to...

The fabrication of nanoscale patterns over a large area has been considered important but difficult, because there are few ways to satisfy both conditions. Previously, visually tolerable tiling (VTT) for fabricating nanopatterns for optical applicati...

Polymer-based flexible micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) tactile sensors have been widely studied for a variety of applications, such as medical and robot fields. The small size and flexibility are of great advantage in terms of accurate measur...

A water drop can bounce upon impacting a superhydrophobic surface. However, on certain superhydrophobic surfaces, a water drop will stick rather than bounce if it is sufficiently hot. Here, we aim to better understand the mechanisms that can lead to...

The delaying mechanism is an important part of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) devices. However, very few mechanical delaying mechanisms are available. In this paper, an elastic-beam delaying mechanism has been proposed innovatively through e...

Tool wear is a significant issue for the application of micro end mills. This can be significantly improved by coating materials on tool surfaces. This paper investigates the effects of different coating materials on tool wear in the micro milling of...

Carbon, one of the most abundant materials, is very attractive for many applications because it exists in a variety of forms based on dimensions, such as zero-dimensional (0D), one-dimensional (1D), two-dimensional (2D), and-three dimensional (3D). C...

Metamaterials are composed of nanostructures, called artificial atoms, which can give metamaterials extraordinary properties that cannot be found in natural materials. The nanostructures themselves and their arrangements determine the metamaterials’...

Antibiotic resistance has been one of the biggest threats to global health. Despite the available prevention and control strategies and efforts in developing new antibiotics, the need remains for effective approaches against antibiotic resistance. Ef...

The biocatalytic activity of transglutaminases (TGs) leads to the synthesis of new covalent isopeptide bonds (crosslinks) between peptide-bound glutamine and lysine residues, but also the transamidation of primary amines to glutamine residues, which...

Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in blood circulation play an important role in cancer metastasis. CTCs are generally defined as the cells in circulating blood expressing the surface antigen EpCAM (epithelial cell adhesion molecule). Nevertheless, CTC...

Micro-machining is an enabling technology for the manufacture of micro-products in which functional features, or at least one dimension, are in the order of μm. [...]