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The working principle of dry micro-electro-discharge machining of vertically aligned carbon-nanotube forests is investigated by evaluating the effect of oxygen on the process. The machining experiments with controlled oxygen/nitrogen ratios indicate a correlation between the peak current of discharge pulses and the oxygen concentration, suggesting not only a vital role for oxygen in the process, but also a removal mechanism fundamentally different from that in typical electro-discharge machining based on direct melting and evaporation of the sample material. The highest surface quality and uniformity in the machined forest microstructures as well as smooth machining without short circuiting are achieved at an approximate oxygen concentration of 20% under the discharge condition of 30 V and 10 pF, revealing that air is an optimal medium for the removal process. Elemental and molecular analyses show no evidence of significant crystalline deterioration or contamination in the nanotubes processed with the technique. V

Carbon nanotube (CNT) forests are known to be among the darkest materials on earth. They can absorb the entire visible range of electromagnetic wave more efficiently than any other known black material. We have attempted controlled mechanical processing of the CNTs and, surprisingly, observed mirror-like reflection from the processed area with 10%-15% reflectivity, a level higher than typical reflectivity of pure forests by over two orders of magnitude, for a wide range of the spectrum (570-1100 nm). Patterning of micro mirrors in the forest is demonstrated to show its potential application for producing monolithically integrated reflector-absorber arrays in the material. V

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A wavelet-based power management system is proposed in this paper with a combination of the battery and ultracapacitor (UC) hybrid energy storage system (HESS). The wavelet filter serves as a frequency-based filter for distributing the power between the battery and UC. In order to determine the optimal level of wavelet decomposition as well as the optimal activation power of the wavelet controller, an optimization procedure is established. The proposed frequency-based power management system moderates the usage of battery current, consequently improving its lifetime. Compared with the conventional threshold-based power management systems, the proposed system has the advantage of enhanced battery and UC power management. A LiFePO 4 battery is considered and its life loss is modeled. As a case study, an electric motorcycle is evaluated in the federal test procedure (FTP) driving cycle. Compared with a conventional energy storage system (ESS) and a state of available power (SoP) management systems, the results show an improvement for the battery lifetime by 115% and 3%, respectively. The number of battery replacements is increased, and the energy recovery is improved. The 10-year overall costs of the proposed HESS strategy using wavelet are 1500 dollars lower, compared with the ESS.

This work investigates dry micro-electro-discharge machining (lEDM) of vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) forests that are used as cathodes in the process, as opposed to conventional lEDM where the material to be machined forms the anode, toward achieving higher precision in the patterned microstructures. The new configuration with the reversed polarity is observed to generate higher discharge currents in the process, presumably due to effective field-emission from CNTs. This effect allows the process to be performed at very low discharge energies, approximately 80Â smaller than in the conventional normal-polarity case, with the machining voltage and tolerance down to 10 V and 2.5 lm, respectively, enabling high-precision high-aspect-ratio micropatterning in the forests. The new approach is also demonstrated to make the process faster, cleaner, and more stable than conventional processing. Spectroscopic analyses of the forests processed by reverse lEDM show no evidence of significant crystalline deterioration or contamination in the CNTs.

This paper presents a thermoresponsive micro circuit breaker for biomedical applications specifically targeted at electronic intelligent implants. The circuit breaker is micromachined to have a shape-memory-alloy cantilever actuator as a normally closed temperature-sensitive switch to protect the device of interest from overheating, a critical safety feature for smart implants including those that are electrothermally driven with wireless micro heaters. The device is fabricated in a size of 1.5  ×  2.0  ×  0.46 mm3 using biocompatible materials and a chip-based titanium package, exhibiting a nominal cold-state resistance of 14 Ω. The breaker rapidly enters the full open condition when the chip temperature exceeds 63 °C, temporarily breaking the circuit of interest to lower its temperature until chip temperature drops to 51 °C, at which the breaker closes the circuit to allow current to flow through it again, physically limiting the maximum temperature of the circuit. This functionality is tested in combination with a wireless resonant heater powered by radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation, demonstrating self-regulation of heater temperature. The developed circuit-breaker chip operates in a fully passive manner that removes the need for active sensor and circuitry to achieve temperature regulation in a target device, contributing to the miniaturization of biomedical microsystems including electronic smart implants where thermal management is essential.