Influence of Hardwood Lignin Blending on the Electrical and Mechanical Properties of Cellulose Based Carbon Fibers.

Carbon fibers (CFs) are fabricated by blending hardwood kraft lignin (HKL) and cellulose. Various compositions of HKL and cellulose in blended solutions are air-gap spun in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EMIM OAc), resulting in the production of virtually bead-free quality fibers. The synthesized HKL-cellulose fibers are thermostabilized and carbonized to achieve CFs, and consequently their electrical and mechanical properties are evaluated.

Spin-Coated Heterogenous Stacked Electrodes for Performance Enhancement in CMOS-Compatible On-Chip Microsupercapacitors.

Integration of microsupercapacitors (MSCs) with on-chip sensors and actuators with nanoenergy harvesters can improve the lifetime of wireless sensor nodes in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) architecture. However, to be easy to integrate with such harvester technology, MSCs should be fabricated through a complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible technology, ubiquitous in electrode choice with the capability of heterogeneous stacking of electrodes for modulation in properties driven by application requirements. In this article, we address both these issues through fabrication of multielectrode modular, high energy density microsupercapacitors (MSC) containing reduced graphene oxide (GO), GO-heptadecane-9-amine (GO-HD9A), rGO-octadecylamine (rGO-ODA), and rGO-heptadecane-9-amine (rGO-HD9A) that stack through a scalable, CMOS compatible, high-wafer-yield spin-coating process.

Dry Film Photoresist-Based Microfabrication: A New Method to Fabricate Millimeter-Wave Waveguide Components.

This paper presents a novel fabrication method based on dry film photoresists to realize waveguides and waveguide-based passive components operating at the millimeter-wave frequency (30-300 GHz). We demonstrate that the proposed fabrication method has a high potential as an alternative to other microfabrication technologies, such as silicon-based and SU8-based micromachining for realizing millimeter-wave waveguide components. Along with the nearly identical transfer of geometrical structures, the dry film photoresist offers other advantages such as fewer processing steps, lower production cost, and shorter prototyping time over the conventional micromachining technologies.

Impact of electrode geometry and thickness on planar on-chip microsupercapacitors.

We report an assessment of the influence of both finger geometry and vertically-oriented carbon nanofiber lengths in planar micro-supercapacitors. Increasing the finger number leads to an up-scaling in areal power densities, which increases with scan rate. Growing the nanofibers longer, however, does not lead to a proportional growth in capacitance, proposedly related to limited ion penetration of the electrode.

Enhanced Electrode Deposition for On-Chip Integrated Micro-Supercapacitors by Controlled Surface Roughening.

On-chip micro-supercapacitors (MSCs), integrated with energy harvesters, hold substantial promise for developing self-powered wireless sensor systems. However, MSCs have conventionally been manufactured through techniques incompatible with semiconductor fabrication technology, the most significant bottleneck being the electrode deposition technique. Utilization of spin-coating for electrode deposition has shown potential to deliver several complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible MSCs on a silicon substrate.

Maintaining Transparency of a Heated MEMS Membrane for Enabling Long-Term Optical Measurements on Soot-Containing Exhaust Gas.

Ensuring optical transparency over a wide spectral range of a window with a view into the tailpipe of the combustion engine, while it is exposed to the harsh environment of soot-containing exhaust gas, is an essential pre-requisite for introducing optical techniques for long-term monitoring of automotive emissions. Therefore, a regenerable window composed of an optically transparent polysilicon-carbide membrane with a diameter ranging from 100 µm up to 2000 µm has been fabricated in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. In the first operating mode, window transparency is periodically restored by pulsed heating of the membrane using an integrated resistor for heating to temperatures that result in oxidation of deposited soot (600-700 °C).

Carbon-Based Electrode Materials for Microsupercapacitors in Self-Powering Sensor Networks: Present and Future Development.

There is an urgent need to fulfill future energy demands for micro and nanoelectronics. This work outlines a number of important design features for carbon-based microsupercapacitors, which enhance both their performance and integration potential and are critical for complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility. Based on these design features, we present CMOS-compatible, graphene-based microsupercapacitors that can be integrated at the back end of the line of the integrated circuit fabrication.

A Micromachined Coupled-Cantilever for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters.

This paper presents a demonstration of the feasibility of fabricating micro-cantilever harvesters with extended stress distribution and enhanced bandwidth by exploiting an M-shaped two-degrees-of-freedom design. The measured mechanical response of the fabricated device displays the predicted dual resonance peak behavior with the fundamental peak at the intended frequency. This design has the features of high energy conversion efficiency in a miniaturized environment where the available vibrational energy varies in frequency.

Tailor-made conductive inks from cellulose nanofibrils for 3D printing of neural guidelines.

Neural tissue engineering (TE), an innovative biomedical method of brain study, is very dependent on scaffolds that support cell development into a functional tissue. Recently, 3D patterned scaffolds for neural TE have shown significant positive effects on cells by a more realistic mimicking of actual neural tissue. In this work, we present a conductive nanocellulose-based ink for 3D printing of neural TE scaffolds.

Low temperature and cost-effective growth of vertically aligned carbon nanofibers using spin-coated polymer-stabilized palladium nanocatalysts.

We describe a fast and cost-effective process for the growth of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) at a temperature compatible with complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, using highly stable polymer-Pd nanohybrid colloidal solutions of palladium catalyst nanoparticles (NPs). Two polymer-Pd nanohybrids, namely poly(lauryl methacrylate)-block-poly((2-acetoacetoxy)ethyl methacrylate)/Pd (LauMA -b-AEMA /Pd) and polyvinylpyrrolidone/Pd were prepared in organic solvents and spin-coated onto silicon substrates. Subsequently, vertically aligned CNFs were grown on these NPs by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition at different temperatures.

Electromechanically tunable carbon nanofiber photonic crystal.

We demonstrate an electrically tunable 2D photonic crystal array constructed from vertically aligned carbon nanofibers. The nanofibers are actuated by applying a voltage between adjacent carbon nanofiber pairs grown directly on metal electrodes, thus dynamically changing the form factor of the photonic crystal lattice. The change in optical properties is characterized using optical diffraction and ellipsometry.

Linear variable optical filter-based ultraviolet microspectrometer.

An IC-compatible linear variable optical filter (LVOF) for application in the UV spectral range between 310 and 400 nm has been fabricated using resist reflow and an optimized dry-etching. The LVOF is mounted on the top of a commercially available CMOS camera to result in a UV microspectrometer. A special calibration technique has been employed that is based on an initial spectral measurement on a xenon lamp.

Cobalt (II) chloride promoted formation of honeycomb patterned cellulose acetate films.

CoCl(2) containing honeycomb patterned films were prepared from cellulose acetate (CA)/CoCl(2)/acetone solutions by the breath figure method in a wide range of humidities. Size and pore regularity depend on the CA/CoCl(2) molar ratio and humidity. When replacing CoCl(2) with Co(NO(3))(2) or CoBr(2), no formation of ordered porosity in the cellulose acetate films is observed.

Optical label-free nanoplasmonic biosensing using a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser and charge-coupled device.

We present a compact platform for biochemosensing based on the combination of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) light source, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based microoptics, a specially designed nanoplasmonic sensing chip, and charge-coupled device (CCD) detector. The platform does not require any spectral analyzer for signal evaluation, showing good promise for facile integration, neither does it use any microscope setup for the signal collection or imaging. The analytical capabilities of the developed biochemosensing platform are demonstrated by evaluation of the protein-substrate (biotinylated bovine serum albumin-gold) and the protein-protein (biotin-NeutrAvidin) binding kinetics, which is further compared to detection based on conventional optical extinction spectroscopy.

Towards an electrowetting-based digital microfluidic platform for magnetic immunoassays.

We demonstrate ElectroWetting-On-Dielectric (EWOD) transport and SQUID gradiometer detection of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) suspended in a 2 microl de-ionized water droplet. This proof-of-concept methodology constitutes the first development step towards a highly sensitive magnetic immunoassay platform with SQUID readout and droplet-based sample handling. Magnetic AC-susceptibility measurements were performed on MNPs with a hydrodynamic diameter of 100 nm using a high-Tc dc Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) gradiometer as detector.

Compatibility assessment of CVD growth of carbon nanofibers on bulk CMOS devices.

We compare the level of deterioration in the basic functionality of individual transistors on ASIC chips fabricated in standard 130 nm bulk CMOS technology when subjected to three disparate CVD techniques with relatively low processing temperature to grow carbon nanostructures. We report that the growth technique with the lowest temperature has the least impact on the transistor behavior.

Replication of continuous-profiled micro-optical elements for silicon integration.

A novel scheme for the integration of diffractive optical elements onto silicon is presented. The processing is made in reverse order, meaning that the process of structuring the optical elements on the wafer precedes the silicon microstructuring. The first processing step on the wafer is the hot embossing of the optical microstructures into an amorphous fluorocarbon polymer spin coated on the wafer.

Electrical properties of Si-SiO(2)-Si nanogaps.

The chances of attaching organic molecules to silicon surfaces can be considerably enhanced if a robust nanogap structure with silicon electrodes can be used to connect the molecules. We describe the electrical properties of such an electrode structure, with a separation of the silicon surfaces in the 3-7 nm range. These silicon nanogaps are manufactured by partly removing the silicon dioxide insulator from a silicon-oxide-silicon material stack, by using a selective oxide etchant.