International Journal of Modern Physics B

Molecular dynamics (MDs) simulations were used to explore the thermal stability of Au nanoparticles (NPs) with decahedral, cuboctahedral, icosahedral and Marks NPs. According to the calculated cohesive energy and melting temperature, the Marks NPs have a higher cohesive energy and melting temperature compared to these other shapes. The Lindemann index, radial distribution function, deformation parameters, mean square displacement and self-diffusivity have been used to characterize the structure variation during heating. This work may inspire researchers to prepare Marks NPs and apply them in different fields.

A 3D model of flip-chip package is established and thermal–electrical coupling is analyzed. The effect of the width of Aluminum (Al) trace on electro-migration mechanism is also studied. Reducing rates of the hot-spot temperature, the max Joule heating, the max temperature gradient and the max current density are defined to research the effects of the Al trace thickness and the UBM thickness on electro-migration.

The microgram weights have wide applications in the mechanical testing of nano- and bio-material sensors. They are increasing the requirement of small force and mass below 1 mg among the researchers, industry and bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing. In this paper, the current research status is presented, both from the measurement method and manufacture of microgram weights. The commonly used material for micro-weights is stainless steel and aluminum. Now NIM has developed another kind of microgram weights with titanium alloy. For the reason that it has smaller size than normal material like aluminum, special designed exchange weighing pan was used in measurement, which solved the problems that the weighing hooks cannot carry up and down the wire shape microgram weight. Then this kind of microgram weights was tested in subdivision measurement on an automatic mass comparator. It showed good performance in the experiment, which extends the choice for the industrial and metrological user. The uncertainty evaluation of micro-weight values range from 0.05 mg to 0.5 mg with standard uncertainty between 0.2 g and 0.1 μg.

Aiming at the problem that sapphire surface roughness is quite large after wet etching in sapphire microstructure processing technology, we optimize the wet etching process parameters, study on the influences of concentration and temperature of etching solution and etching time on the sapphire surface roughness and etching rate, choose different process parameters for the experiment and test and analyze the sapphire results after wet etching. Aiming at test results, we also optimize the process parameters and do experiment. Experimental results show that, after optimizing the parameters of etching solution, surface roughness of etched sapphire is 0.39 nm, effectively with reduced surface roughness, improved light extraction efficiency and meeting the production requirements of high-precision optical pressure sensor.

Coherent population trapping (CPT) cesium frequency standard plays a significant role in precision guidance of missile and global positioning system (GPS). Low noise 4.596 GHz voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) is an indispensable part of microwave signal source in cesium frequency standard. Low-phase noise is also the most important and difficult performance indicator of VCO. Starting from phase noise analysis method proposed by Leeson, the formulas about the relationship between phase noise of output signal of oscillator feedback model and phase fluctuation spectrum of amplifier, phase noise of oscillator are derived in this paper. Finally, the asymptote model of microwave oscillator is proposed based on the formula derivation. The experiment shows that when the reverse bias voltage of variode is 1.8 V, the designed oscillation frequency of VCO is 4.596 GHz, the power is −1 dBm and the DC power consumption is 19.6 mW. The tendency of phase noise simulation curve and actual test curve conform to asymptote model. The phase noise in 1 and 10 kHz is, respectively, −60.86 and −86.58 dBc/Hz. The significance of the paper lies in determining the main factors influencing oscillator phase noise and providing guiding direction for the design of low-phase noise VCO.

The die attachment adhesive is commonly fully deposited on the substrate to connect the chips and the package shell in the packaging of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices. The packaging stress and deformation will be changed under temperature variation and further impact the thermal stability of devices. This paper describes a partial layout of die attachment adhesive used in a comb MEMS capacitive accelerometer, which can attenuate the thermal deformation and reduce the thermal drift of the sensor. The accelerometers with the bonded area designed from the global portion to nonsensitive portion of the sensor die are modeled by using finite element analysis (FEA) to study the deformation of the sensitive component induced by temperature change, and the corresponding thermal drift is obtained by simulation and theoretical methods. Both the results indicate that the thermal drift will decrease when the length of the unbonded area is larger than about 700 μm, and when the adhesive bonds only in the area of the nonsensitive portion of the sensor, the thermal drift will reduce about 19% relative to the global attachment. The partial layout of die attachment adhesive is therefore a useful method to improve the thermal stability for stress-sensitive MEMS devices.

Harvesting energy from the surrounding environment through piezoelectric conversion is a promising method for implementing self-sustained low-power devices. To date, most piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) developed can only scavenge energy from the unidirectional mechanical vibration. This deficiency severely limits the adaptability of PEHs because the real-world excitations may involve different mechanical motions and the mechanical vibration may come from various directions. To tackle this issue, we proposed a multipurpose PEH, which is composed of a ferromagnetic ball, a cylindrical track and four piezoelectric cantilever beams. In this paper, theoretical and experimental studies were carried out to examine the performance of the multipurpose PEH. The experimental results indicate that, under the vibrations that are perpendicular to the ground, the maximum peak voltage is increased by 3.2 V and the bandwidth of the voltage above 4 V is expanded by more than 4 Hz by the proposed PEH as compared to its linear counterpart; the maximum power output of 0.8 mW is attained when the PEH is excited at 39.5 Hz. Under the sway motion around different directions on the horizontal plane, significant power outputs, varying from 0.05 mW to 0.18 mW, are also generated by the multipurpose PEH when the sway angle is larger than 5${}^{\circ }$ and the sway frequency is smaller than 2.8 Hz. In addition, the multipurpose PEH demonstrates the capacity of collecting energy from the rotation motion, and approximately 0.14 mW power output is achieved when the rotation frequency is 1 Hz.

In order to get a thorough understanding of the total digital silicon micro-gyroscope, a novel system-level model with details of both the sense and circuit is presented in this paper. Unlike the traditional structures of the digital part of the digital gyroscope, a structure with programmable delay units (PDUs) instead of DPLLs gives a brief and robust character of the whole system. And the PDUs coordinating with the FIR filter could lead to a removal of the IF filters of the sigma–delta DAC for feedback, which saves a lot of consumption. Two MASH sigma–delta ADCs are designed to convert the output of the charge–voltage converters to digital signals, which also bring a better stability. The ADCs achieve an SNR of 102.5 dB with a 10 kHz bandwidth. The stabilization of the closed drive mode has also been analyzed including how the noise caused by the quantization of the digital circuit is affecting the stabilization of both the amplitude and frequency of the driving signals. In the end, a final result of simulation of the gyroscope shows the correctness and accuracy of the whole model of the gyroscope.

In this work, we propose and demonstrate a flexible capacitive tactile sensor array based on graphene served as electrodes. The sensor array consists of 3 × 3 units with 3 mm spatial resolution, similar to that of human skin. Each unit has three layers. The middle layer with microstructured PDMS served as an insulator is sandwiched by two perpendicular graphene-based electrodes. The size of each unit is 3 mm × 3 mm and the initial capacitance is about 0.2 pF. High sensitivities of 0.73 kPa${}^{-1}$ between 0 and 1.2 kPa and 0.26 kPa${}^{-1}$ between 1.2 and 2.5 kPa were achieved on the fabricated graphene pressure sensors. The proposed flexible pressure sensor array shows a great potential on the application of electric skin or 3D touch control.

Nowadays, some countries have already invented chip-scale atomic clock (CSAC) based on coherent population trapping (CPT), and it has been applied in every areas. According to its working principle, the microwave signal source is one of the decisive factors affecting its stability. Usually the microwave signal source is a phase-locked loop circuit, it mainly includes a frequency synthesizer, a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and a loop filter. This paper aims to develop a microwave signal source for Cs CSAC. First, a VCO should be designed, in order to validate the characteristic of the designed VCO, the VCO needs to be tested at high and low temperatures, and the results show that it has good stability of high and low temperatures. Second, for the purpose of verifying that the design and production consistency of the VCO are in good condition, 1000 VCOs are test, respectively. The statistical distribution of the phase noise at 1 kHz offset would be painted a curve. Finally, the designed VCO (PN: 61.01dBc/Hz@1kHz) will be applied in phase-locked loop, the test results show that the phase noise is −83.57dBc/Hz@300Hz, it is much better than −43dBc/Hz@300Hz which is the spec of CSAC. If the microwave signal source would be used in CSAC, its stability would be greatly improved.

Scavenging energy from human motion through piezoelectric transduction has been considered as a feasible alternative to batteries for powering portable devices and realizing self-sustained devices. To date, most piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) developed can only collect energy from the uni-directional mechanical vibration. This deficiency severely limits their applicability to human motion energy harvesting because the human motion involves diverse mechanical motions. In this paper, a novel PEH is proposed to harvest energy from the motion of human lower limbs. This PEH is composed of two piezoelectric cantilever beams, a sleeve and a ferromagnetic ball. The two beams are designed to sense the vibration along the tibial axis and conduct piezoelectric conversion. The ball senses the leg swing and actuates the two beams to vibrate via magnetic coupling. Theoretical and experimental studies indicate that the proposed PEH can scavenge energy from both the vibration and the swing. During each stride, the PEH can produce multiple peaks in voltage output, which is attributed to the superposition of different excitations. Moreover, the root-mean-square (RMS) voltage output of the PEH increases when the walking speed ranges from 2 to 8 km/h. In addition, the ultra-low frequencies of human motion are also up-converted by the proposed design.

Combining the bond-energy model and Debye theory, we generalized the Gibbs free energy model for Cu–Pt nanoparticles (NPs) by introducing a shape factor considering the shape effect. We studied the structural stability of the Cu–Pt NPs and plotted the corresponding composition-, shape- and size-dependent phase diagrams. It is shown that the Cu–Pt NPs can form alloyed structure in a large size range. But when the particle size continues to decrease, the NPs will form the core–shell structure due to surface segregation. Meanwhile, the composition segregation could make the atoms of less-content element to gather in the surface. The predictions from the present calculated phase diagrams are consistent with a series of experimental results in literatures. To further prove the efficiency of the phase diagrams, we synthesized the alloyed Cu–Pt NPs of 4–15 nm by a co-reduction method, which is in agreement with the predictions from the phase diagrams.

Micro-particle is hard to be observed as small scale and hard to be gripped as micro-force from substrate, an automatic approach and grip method of micro-particle in the guide of microscopic vision systems is proposed in the paper to grip micro-particle. First, the micro-gripper driven by electrostatic force is introduced and forces in gripping process are analyzed. Second, a micro-assembly robot composed of two microscopic vision systems is established to monitor micro-operation process and to operate micro-particle. Image features of micro-particle and micro-gripper end-effector are extracted by image feature extraction method to calculate relative position of micro-particle and micro-gripper in image space. Last, a movement control strategy in 3D space based on image Jacobian matrix is studied to control micro-gripper approach and align with micro-particle. Experimental results verified the effectiveness of proposed methods.

The property and compatibility between fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and back-scattering signals are investigated by employing optical time domain reflectometry. We compare the power spectrums of spontaneous Brillouin scattering (SpBS), simultaneous Brillouin scattering (SBS) and Rayleigh scattering (RS), and coupling mechanism between FBG and back-scattering signal is explored. Experimental results show that the region of FBG contributes to the backscatter power and causes the desired reflection, and the power peak of FBG in SBS power spectrum is the sharpest among back-scattering light power spectrums and broadens with the decrease of spatial resolution. Moreover, the FBG-based method is used to find the location of temperature or stain event for scatter-based distributed sensors.