Micromachines, Volume 9, Issue 4

Microfluidic devices are used in a myriad of biomedical applications such as cancer screening, drug testing, and point-of-care diagnostics. Three-dimensional (3D) printing offers a low-cost, rapid prototyping, efficient fabrication method, as compare...

A localized maskless modification method of polyurethane (PU) films through an atmospheric pressure He/O₂ plasma microjet (APPμJ) was proposed. The APPμJ system combines an atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) with a microfabricated silicon m...

In this paper, an in-plane reciprocating displacement micropump for liquids and gases which is actuated by a new class of electrostatic bending actuators is reported. The so-called “Nano Electrostatic Drive” is capable of deflecting beyon...

Scientific communities are drawn to the open source model as an increasingly utilitarian method to produce and share work. Initially used as a means to develop freely-available software, open source projects have been applied to hardware including sc...

Minimized motors can harvest different types of energy and transfer them into kinetic power to carry out complex operations, such as targeted drug delivery, health care, sensing and so on. In recent years, the liquid metal motor is emerging as a very...

Optical excitation of mechanical resonators has long been a research interest, since it has great applications in the physical and engineering field. Previous optomechanical methods rely on the wavelength-dependent, optical anti-damping effects, with...

Microfluidic quartz crystal microbalances (QCM) can be used as powerful biosensors that not only allow quantifying a target analyte, but also provide kinetic information about the surface processes of binding and release. Nevertheless, their practica...

Symmetry enables excellent motion performance of compliant mechanisms, such as minimized parasitic motion, reduced cross-axis coupling, mitigated buckling, and decreased thermal sensitivity. However, most existing symmetric compliant mechanisms are h...

We report the development of a magnetic tweezers that can be used to micromanipulate single DNA molecules by applying picoNewton (pN)-scale forces in the horizontal plane. The resulting force–extension data from our experiments show high-resolu...

The development of organ-on-chip and biological scaffolds is currently requiring simpler methods for microstructure biocompatible materials in three dimensions, to fabricate structural and functional elements in biomaterials, or modify the physicoche...

Due to their high isolation, low insertion loss, high linearity, and low power consumption, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches have drawn much attention from researchers in recent years. In this paper, we introduce the research status of...

The application of subwavelength, textured structures to glass surfaces has been shown to reduce reflectivity and also results in self-cleaning due to super-hydrophobicity. However, current methods of producing such textures are typically either expe...

Droplet optofluidics technology aims at manipulating the tiny volume of fluids confined in micro-droplets with light, while exploiting their interaction to create “digital” micro-systems with highly significant scientific and technological interests....

A novel topology optimization approach is proposed in this paper for the design of three rotational degree-of-freedom (DOF) spatially compliant mechanisms, combining the Jacobian isomorphic mapping matrix with the solid isotropic material with penali...

In the present study, we quantitatively evaluated dielectric breakdown in silicon-based micro- and nanofluidic devices under practical electrophoretic conditions by changing the thickness of the insulating layer. At higher buffer concentration, a sil...

A novel surface activation technology for Cu-Cu bonding-based wafer-level vacuum packaging using hot-wire-generated atomic hydrogen treatment was developed. Vacuum sealing temperature at 300 °C was achieved by atomic hydrogen pre-treatment for Cu...

In contrast to traditional drug administration, targeted drug delivery can prolong, localize, target and have a protected drug interaction with the diseased tissue. Drug delivery carriers, such as polymeric micelles, liposomes, dendrimers, nanotubes,...

This research proposes a mass sensor based on mechanical resonance that is free from power supply lines (line-free) and incorporates both microfluidic mechanisms and label-free techniques to improve its sensitivity and reusability. The microfluidic l...

An acceleration sensor based on piezoelectric thin films is proposed in this paper, which comprises the elastic element of a silicon cantilever beam and a piezoelectric structure with Li-doped ZnO piezoelectric thin films. The Li-doped ZnO piezoelect...

We introduce herein the induced-charge electrokinetic phenomenon to nanometer fluidic systems; the design of the nanofluidic ion diode for field-effect ionic current control of the nanometer dimension is developed by enhancing internal ion concentrat...

Thermocompression bonding for wafer-level hermetic packaging was demonstrated at the lowest temperature of 370 to 390 °C ever reported using Al films with thin Sn capping or insertions as bonding layer. For shrinking the chip size of MEMS (micro elec...

We investigate the architecture of microfabricated vapor cells with reflective sidewalls for applications in chip scale atomic sensors. The optical configuration in operation is suitable for both one-beam and two-beam (pump & probe) schemes. In t...

Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) suspended inductors have excellent radio-frequency (RF) performance, but poor mechanical properties. To improve their reliability, auxiliary pillars have been used. However, few studies have been carried out on t...

The fabrication and testing of spiral microchannels with a trapezoidal cross section for the passive separation of microparticles is reported in this article. In contrast to previously reported fabrication methods, the fabrication of trapezoidal spir...

A millimeter-wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) has been demonstrated using micromachined tungsten-coated through glass silicon via (TGSV) structures. Two-step deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) of silicon vias and selective tungsten coating ont...

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) resonators require fast, accurate, and cost-effective testing for mass production. Among the different test methods, frequency domain analysis is one of the easiest and fastest. This paper presents the measuremen...

Wearable tissue heaters can play many important roles in the medical field. They may be used for heat therapy, perioperative warming and controlled transdermal drug delivery, among other applications. State-of-the-art heaters are too bulky, rigid, or...

Recent advances in graphene and other two-dimensional (2D) material synthesis and characterization have led to their use in emerging technologies, including flexible electronics. However, a major challenge is electrical contact stability, especially...

We report a new analytical model of the MEMS-based thermal property sensor for samples which are difficult to handle and susceptible to damage by thermal stimulus, such as living cells. Many sensor designs had been reported for thermal property measu...

The authors would like to make the following changes to the published paper [1]: Equation (5) should be written as follows:[...]

Light manipulation has always been the fundamental subject in the field of optics since centuries ago. Traditional optical devices are usually designed using glasses and other materials, such as semiconductors and metals. Optofluidics is the combinat...

This paper reports on a chip cooling solution using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based microfluidic devices filled with n-Octadecane. A thick SU-8 layer of 150 µm is used as the master mold for patterning PDMS fabrication. With the SU-8 mold, patterns...

The focus of this study is on the manufacturing of micro air bearings (MABs) using silica film assisted processing. Structure of the three-layer micro air bearing is described in detail and the salient process flow of etching and bonding is illustrat...

The ion depletion zone of ion concentration polarization has a strong potential to act as an immaterial barrier, separating delicate submicron substances, including biomolecules, without causing physical damage. However, the detailed mechanisms of th...

Parylene C is a widely used polymer material in microfabrication because of its excellent properties such as chemical inertness, biocompatibility and flexibility. It has been commonly adopted as a structural material for a variety of microfluidics an...

The application of microfluidic technology to manipulate cells or biological particles is becoming one of the rapidly growing areas, and various microarray trapping devices have recently been designed for high throughput single-cell analysis and mani...

Water quality-related incidents are attracting attention globally as they cause serious diseases and even threaten human lives. The current detection and monitoring methods are inadequate because of their long operation time, high cost, and complex p...

Displays can present information like text, images, or videos in a different color (visible light) by activating the materials in pixels. In a display device, pixels are typically of micrometer size and filled with displaying materials that are align...

Droplet-based micromixers are essential units in many microfluidic devices for widespread applications, such as diagnostics and synthesis. The mixers can be either passive or active. When compared to active methods, the passive mixer is widely used b...

This paper proposes an electric power self-supply module for the wireless sensor network (WSN) sensor node. The module includes an electromagnetic vibration energy harvester based on micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) technology and a processing...

Organic syntheses based on photochemical reactions play an important role in the medical, pharmaceutical, and polymeric chemistry. For years, photochemistry was performed using high-pressure mercury lamps and immersion-wells. However, due to excellen...

Wideband and low-loss microwave power measurements are becoming increasingly important for microwave communication and radar systems. To achieve such a power measurement, this paper presents the design and measurement of wideband DC-25 GHz and low-lo...

The electroosmotic flow (EOF) of viscoelastic fluid in a long nanoslit is numerically studied to investigate the rheological property effect of Linear Phan-Thien-Tanner (LPTT) fluid on the fully developed EOF. The non-linear Poisson-Nernst-Planck equ...

Capillarity refers to the driving force to propel liquid through small gaps in the absence of external forces, and hence enhanced capillary force has been pursued for various applications. In this study, flower like ZnO nanostructures are successfull...

Heavy metal ion pollution problems have had a terrible influence on human health and the environment. Therefore, the monitoring of heavy metal ions is of great practical significance. In this paper, an electrochemical three-electrode system was fabri...

Techniques, such as micropipette aspiration and optical tweezers, are widely used to measure cell mechanical properties, but are generally labor-intensive and time-consuming, typically involving a difficult process of manipulation. In the past two de...

Based on the scanning grating mirror we developed, this paper presents a method of the precise control of a scanning grating mirror and of high-speed spectrum data detection. In addition, the system circuit of the scanning grating mirror control and...

Taxis has been reported in many cells and microorganisms, due to their tendency to migrate toward favorable physical situations and avoid damage and death. Thermotaxis and chemotaxis are two of the major types of taxis that naturally occur on a daily...

RSA 905, a rapidly solidified aluminum alloy, has been widely utilized in optical, automotive, and aerospace industries owing to its superior mechanical properties such as hardness and strength compared to conventional aluminum alloys. However, the s...

A diamond-like carbon (DLC) film, coated on an SKD11 (alloy tool steel) substrate, was shaped by plasma oxidation to form an assembly of DLC macro-pillars and to be used as a DLC-punch array that is micro-embossed into aluminum sheets. First, the SKD...