Inverted-pyramid silicon nanopore arrays are realized with a well-controlled, three-step, anisotropic wet etching process with different KOH bath temperatures. The influence of etchant concentration and temperature on the etching rate is investigated. Nanopore arrays with an average size of 100 nm and individual nanopores with feature sizes as small as 30 nm were successfully fabricated at low cost using this method. This study paves the way toward the controllable, large-scale production of arrays of inverted-pyramid nanopores with desired size.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used to measure the levels of trace heavy metals in human urine and sweat, to compare the performance of ICP-MS using three sample processing methods, namely direct dilution, wet digestion, and microwave digestion. The results showed that the wet digestion ICP-MS method has the highest accuracy (relative standard deviation ≤10%) and is more useful for measuring the levels of trace heavy metals in urine and sweat. Hence, we used this method to compare the levels of the five trace heavy metals, namely chromium, copper, zinc, cadmium, and lead, in the urine and sweat of adults after strenuous exercise. The results showed that the levels of these five trace heavy metals in sweat were significantly higher than those in urine after strenuous exercise (The differences between the measurements in urine and those in sweat were significant P ≤ 0.01). The results suggested that exercise-induced sweating can effectively remove the harmful heavy metals from the human body.

Solid-state nanopore arrays are realized with a well-controlled, three-step, anisotropic wet etching process with different KOH bath temperatures. The influence of etchant concentration and temperature on the etching rate is investigated. Nanopore arrays with an average size of 100 nm and single pores with a feature size of 30 nm in a silicon membrane are successfully fabricated at low cost using this method. This study paves the way towards the controllable, large-scale production of arrays of nanopores with desired size.

In order to improve the driving ability of vertically-stacked gate-all-around (GAA) Si nanosheets (NSs) devices, a high-efficiency hybrid pattern technique with the SiNx spacer-image transfer and conventional photolithography pattern was proposed and implemented to form size-enlarged landing pads (LPs) on nanometer-scale fins at the same time, which increase the volumes of electrical conductance pathway between NS channel and source and drain (SD) electrodes with high process efficiency and compatibility with traditional mass production technology. Due to introduced new structures, the parasitic resistance of the devices is reduced by 99.8% compared with those w./o. LPs. Therefore, ~3 times and ~2 times driving current enhancements for 500 nm gate length n-type and p-type MOSFETs are obtained, respectively. The results indicate the proposed GAA NS FET fabrication process with LPs by high-efficiency hybrid pattern technique a promising solution for improving the device driving ability for stacked GAA Si NSs devices in future.

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