Ionic Liquid-Based Hybrid Gel Microcolumns for Enhanced Narcotic Detection in Portable Micro-Gas Chromatography.

As the societal issue of increasing global illicit drug usage emerges, there is a growing demand for more portable and versatile drug detectors. Traditional drug analysis techniques such as gas chromatography (GC), liquid chromatography (LC), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) face significant challenges in adapting to diverse real-world applications due to their size, cost, and power requirements. While advancements have been made in the development of on-site drug detection methods such as fluorescence, stereoresonance energy transfer (FRET), colorimetric, electrochemical sensing, and lateral flow assays (LFAs), their reliance on specific reactive materials poses limitations in effectively detecting a wide range of narcotics.

Characterizing microscale aluminum composite layer properties on silicon solar cells with hybrid 3D scanning force measurements.

This article presents a novel technique to estimate the mechanical properties of the aluminum composite layer on silicon solar cells by using a hybrid 3-dimensional laser scanning force measurement (3-D LSFM) system. The 3-D LSFM system measures the material properties of sub-layers constituting a solar cell. This measurement is critical for realizing high-efficient ultra-thin solar cells.