Preparation of Highly Stable Polymer Microstructure with Enhanced Adhesion Strength by Pushpin-like Nano/Microstructure Array.

This polymer microstructure expands more available application, which is a milestone for the development of micro-electro-mechanical system devices towards intelligence and multifunction. Poor interface bonding between the polymer and Si or metal is a particular problem, which restricts the application and promotion of polymer materials. In this study, a transition strengthening layer is proposed to obtain a highly stable polymer microstructure by enhancing the interfacial adhesion strength.

Engineered Switchable-Wettability Surfaces for Multi-Path Directional Transportation of Droplets and Subaqueous Bubbles.

Conventional engineered surfaces for fluid manipulation are hindered by the set wettability, and thus they can only achieve spontaneous transport of single-phase fluid, namely liquid or gas. Moreover, fluid transport systems that are robust to path defects have yet to be fully explored. Here, unprecedentedly, a universal wettability switching strategy is developed for achieving programmable directional transport of both droplets and subaqueous bubbles on a dumbbell-patterned functional surface (DPFS), featuring in strong robustness, high efficiency, and effective cost.

High-Performance Directional Water Transport Using a Two-Dimensional Periodic Janus Gradient Structure.

Numerous materials in micro- or nanoscale hierarchical structures with surface gradients serve as the enablers in directional liquid transportation. However, concurrent high-speed and long-range liquid transport is yet to be fully realized so far. Here, an overall-improved approach is achieved in both water transport distance and velocity aspects using a 2D periodic Janus gradient structure, which is inspired by the Janus-wettable desert beetle back, tapered asymmetric cacti spine, and periodic Nepenthes alata microcavity.

A Minimally Invasive Hollow Microneedle With a Cladding Structure: Ultra-Thin but Strong, Batch Manufacturable.

Objective: A minimally invasive hollow in-plane microneedle with a cladding structure is designed to improve the mechanical strength.

Methods: The traditional weak stack structure has been changed into a cladding structure, and the effectiveness has been validated through finite element analysis. The prototypes of the microneedles were batch manufactured by the integrated micromachining process with no need to assemble.

Shock-Resistibility of MEMS-Based Inertial Microswitch under Reverse Directional Ultra-High g Acceleration for IoT Applications.

This paper presents a novel MEMS-based inertial microswitch design with multi-directional compact constraint structures for improving the shock-resistibility. Its shock-resistibility in the reverse-sensitive direction to ultra-high g acceleration (~hunderds of thousands) is simulated and analyzed. The dynamic response process indicates that in the designed inertial microswitch the proof mass weight G, the whole system's stiffness k and the gap x between the proof mass and reverse constraint blocks have significant effect on the shock-resistibility.

Design and Optimization of a Stationary Electrode in a Vertically-Driven MEMS Inertial Switch for Extending Contact Duration.

A novel micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) inertial microswitch with a flexible contact-enhanced structure to extend the contact duration has been proposed in the present work. In order to investigate the stiffness of the stationary electrodes, the stationary electrodes with different shapes, thickness , width , and length were designed, analyzed, and simulated using ANSYS software. Both the analytical and the simulated results indicate that the stiffness increases with thickness and width , while decreasing with an increase of length , and it is related to the shape.

Fast GPU-based CT reconstruction applied in ablation treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma.

Objective: To develop an image visualization system based on graphic processing unit (GPU) hardware acceleration for clinical use in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) interventional planning.

Methods: We developed a liver tumor planning tool to assist the physician in providing patient-specific analysis and visualization. We employed a spatial distance computation algorithm to determine the spatial location of tumors and their relation to the main hepatic vessels.

Integration of the Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK) into the Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK).

The development cycle of an image-guided surgery navigation system is too long to meet current clinical needs. This paper presents an integrated system developed by the integration of two open-source software (IGSTK and MITK) to shorten the development cycle of the image-guided surgery navigation system and save human resources simultaneously. An image-guided surgery navigation system was established by connecting the two aforementioned open-source software libraries.