pH sensitivity of emeraldine salt polyaniline (ES-PANI) and poly(vinyl butyral) (PVB) blend film was investigated. This blend film can be used as a pH sensing element in new-type pH sensors to replace traditional instruments based on fragile glass electrodes for pH measurement of water in aquaculture farming. Structural and optical characteristic of PANI were studied by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV-vis). Electrical characterization of ES-PANI:PVB blend films versus pH was performed with chemiresistors fabricated by micro-lithography. A ES-PANI:PVB layer was drop-coated on comb-shaped platinum electrodes patterned on SiO 2 /Si substrates. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical microscope were used to investigate morphology of the fabricated platinum electrodes and the coated polymer blend films. I-V measurements of the polymer-coated chemiresistors were performed at very low relative humidity after the polymer films were exposed to pH 1-8. The results showed that logarithm of electrical resistance of the ES-PANI:PVB films increased almost linearly as pH increased from 1 to 8. The initial results showed that the PANI blend-coated chemiresistors can be used as pH sensors for water quality monitoring.
Electroplating is an important step in microfabrication in order to increase thickness of undersized parts up to a few micrometers with a low-cost, fast method that is easy to carry out, especially for metals such as copper, nickel, and silver. This important step promotes the development of the fabrication technology of electronic devices on a flexible substrate, also known as flexible electronic devices. Nevertheless, this technology has some disadvantages such as low surface uniformity and high resistivity. In this paper, parameters of copper electroplating were studied, such as the ratio of copper (II) sulfate (CuSO 4 ) concentration to sulfuric acid (H 2 SO 4 ) concentration and electroplating current density, in order to obtain low resistivity and high surface uniformity of the copper layer. Samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), four-point probe, and surface profiler. The results showed that the sample resistivity could be controlled from about 2.0 to about 3.5 μΩ • cm, and the lowest obtained resistivity was 1.899 μΩ • cm. In addition, surface uniformity of the electroplated copper layer was also acceptable. The thickness of the copper layer was about 10 μm with an error of about 0.5 μm. The most suitable conditions for the electroplating process were CuSO 4 concentration of 0.4 mol l −1 , H 2 SO 4 concentration of 1.0 mol l −1 , and low electroplating current density of 10-20 mA cm −2 . All experiments were performed on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate.
The use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in radio frequency identification (RFID) applications offers a very large range of possibilities to exploit the incredible properties of CNTs. However, due to their entanglement state, their size and the different interacting forces between nanotubes bundles present at nanometric scale, CNTs debundling is very hard to achieve, requiring specific equipment and chemicals. Our purpose was to reduce as small as possible CNTs bundles, in order to realize ink to print on an RFID antenna. The size of the head printer nozzles required very small particles, about a few micrometers, in order to be able to print on the sensitive position of the antenna. To reduce the size of the bundles and stabilize the solution, an ultrasonic horn with an ultrasonic bath were combined as mechanical stress for CNT dispersion, and some chemicals such as sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)—a surfactant, N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)—a solvent, or chitosan were used to meet our requirements.
This paper presents the entire fabrication process including photolithography, sputtering, deep reactive ion etching (Bosch DRIE process) on silicon substrate and bonding process between the lid and silicon substrate to create a designed filtration microfluidic chip with dimension of 28 mm × 7 mm, one inlet port and one outlet port. A pattered silver thin film was deposited on a silicon sample by the lift-off method. Subsequently the newly fabricated sample was anisotropically etched by Bosch DRIE process. Some parameters of Bosch DRIE process such as bias power, duration of etching step and passivation step, oxygen presence were studied to explore the dependence of silicon channel depth and etched shape profile on these parameters. An optimized process was utilized to fabricate a featured silicon channel with vertical, smooth sidewalls and an overall good uniformity. The silicon channel has four arrays of microposts with various distances between microposts from 25 μm to 100 μm. The depth of the silicon channel was about 150 μm. After that, silicon substrate was bonded with mica lid by adhesive bonding method to form the completed filtration microfluidic chip. The samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), mechanical profilometer (DEKTAK 6 M), optical microscopy (Olympus MX51). In this paper a test was performed to demonstrate how the microfluidic chip works by pumping solution with many various sizes of particles through the inlet port of the microfluidic chip and obtaining a solution with desired particles sizes (smaller than 25 μm) through another port. Moreover, the chip could be pumped de-ionized water through outlet port for backwash in order to make this microfluidic chip reusable. Finally, a few applications of microfluidic chips are presented to illustrate the advantages of this technology and the potential for future development.
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