Steady-State and Transient Performance of Ion-Sensitive Electrodes Suitable for Wearable and Implantable Electro-Chemical Sensing.

Traditional Potentiometric Ion-selective Electrodes (ISE) are widely used in industrial and clinical settings. The simplicity and small footprint of ISE have encouraged their recent adoption as wearable/implantable sensors for personalized healthcare and precision agriculture, creating a new set of unique challenges absent in traditional ISE. In this paper, we develop a fundamental physics-based model to describe both steady-state and transient responses of ISE relevant for wearable/implantable sensors.

Ultrafast chemical imaging by widefield photothermal sensing of infrared absorption.

Infrared (IR) imaging has become a viable tool for visualizing various chemical bonds in a specimen. The performance, however, is limited in terms of spatial resolution and imaging speed. Here, instead of measuring the loss of the IR beam, we use a pulsed visible light for high-throughput, widefield sensing of the transient photothermal effect induced by absorption of single mid-IR pulses.

Spatial and Temporal Nanoscale Plasmonic Heating Quantified by Thermoreflectance.

The field of thermoplasmonics has thrived in the past decades because it uniquely provides remotely controllable nanometer-scale heat sources that have augmented numerous technologies. Despite the extensive studies on steady-state plasmonic heating, the dynamic behavior of the plasmonic heaters in the nanosecond regime has remained largely unexplored, yet such a time scale is indeed essential for a broad range of applications such as photocatalysis, optical modulators, and detectors. Here, we use two distinct techniques based on the temperature-dependent surface reflectivity of materials, optical thermoreflectance imaging (OTI) and time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR), to comprehensively investigate plasmonic heating in both spatial and temporal domains.

Steep-slope hysteresis-free negative capacitance MoS transistors.

The so-called Boltzmann tyranny defines the fundamental thermionic limit of the subthreshold slope of a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) at 60 mV dec at room temperature and therefore precludes lowering of the supply voltage and overall power consumption . Adding a ferroelectric negative capacitor to the gate stack of a MOSFET may offer a promising solution to bypassing this fundamental barrier . Meanwhile, two-dimensional semiconductors such as atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenides, due to their low dielectric constant and ease of integration into a junctionless transistor topology, offer enhanced electrostatic control of the channel .

Thermodynamic Studies of β-GaO Nanomembrane Field-Effect Transistors on a Sapphire Substrate.

The self-heating effect is a severe issue for high-power semiconductor devices, which degrades the electron mobility and saturation velocity, and also affects the device reliability. On applying an ultrafast and high-resolution thermoreflectance imaging technique, the direct self-heating effect and surface temperature increase phenomenon are observed on novel top-gate β-GaO on insulator field-effect transistors. Here, we demonstrate that by utilizing a higher thermal conductivity sapphire substrate rather than a SiO/Si substrate, the temperature rise above room temperature of β-GaO on the insulator field-effect transistor can be reduced by a factor of 3 and thereby the self-heating effect is significantly reduced.

Evidence of Universal Temperature Scaling in Self-Heated Percolating Networks.

During routine operation, electrically percolating nanocomposites are subjected to high voltages, leading to spatially heterogeneous current distribution. The heterogeneity implies localized self-heating that may (self-consistently) reroute the percolation pathways and even irreversibly damage the material. In the absence of experiments that can spatially resolve the current distribution and a nonlinear percolation model suitable to interpret them, one relies on empirical rules and safety factors to engineer these materials.

Electroreflectance imaging of gold-H3PO4 supercapacitors. Part II: microsupercapacitor ageing characterization.

This microsupercapacitor ageing study demonstrates the usefulness of the electroreflectance technique by quantifying local charge accumulation. Two separate devices with interdigitated electrodes were evaulated over a period of 4.1 million charge/discharge cycles.

Electroreflectance imaging of gold-H3PO4 supercapacitors. Part I: experimental methodology.

Electroreflectance microscopy is demonstrated as a high-resolution, non-contact method to image dynamic charge distribution in integrated microsupercapacitor structures during fast voltage cycling. Electroreflectance camera images of a gold electrode H3PO4 polymer electrolyte microsupercapacitor reveal time varying charge distribution with submicron spatial resolution, millisecond time resolution, and electroreflectance resolution on the order of 500 nC cm(-2). A model describing changes in the metal electrode's optical constants as a function of free electron concentration shows good agreement with measured electroreflectance.