The nickel (Ni)–gold (Au) core–shell nanowires (CSNWs) were synthesized by a combination of electrodeposition and electroless-plating methods. This template based, electroless-plating approach can control the size and shape of nanostructures by adjusting the experimental conditions. The X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and TEM line-scanning and elemental mapping analyses were applied to investigate the formation and microstructure of the core–shell nanostructure. Also using a focused ion beam lift-out technique provides an important route to prove the inner microstructural details of the CSNWs. The optical characterization showed the surface plasmon absorption shifting with electroless-plating time, whereas the magnetic measurements revealed the shape anisotropy and soft ferromagnetic properties of the NWs. Using the strong interaction between biotin and streptavidin, streptavidin–fluorescent dyes were successfully conjugated on the biotinylated CSNWs. This was then analyzed for the surface plasmon resonance effect and Stokes' shifting viaultraviolet-visible and photoluminescence spectroscopy measurements and imaged by confocal scanning laser microscopy. Proliferating cancer cells (Panc-1) have been used to study the toxicological effects of both Ni–Au CSNWs and Ni NWs in a living cell system: the cellular responses to nanowire effects were observed. Ni–Au CSNWs appeared to be tolerated more by this cell line at the dose tested than Ni NWs.

This paper reports on a symmetrical z-axis gyroscope, whose stiffness of sensing and driving mode is identical in spite of the fabrication and design errors. There is no need of the electrical tuning of frequencies for a high sensitivity because the effective masses of the driving and sensing directions are hardly changed. Furthermore, it is very simple to fabricate the gyroscope with a total chip size of 3/spl times/3.5/spl times/1 mm/sup 2/ using only one mask. The gyroscope structure is fabricated on an anodic bonded 40 /spl mu/m-thick silicon on glass. After the top silicon is etched using a deep RIE, a part of the glass under the silicon structure is etched by HF for releasing the top silicon structure. Since the depth of the etched glass under the silicon structure is about 20/spl sim/30 /spl mu/m, the damping and the stiction between the structure and the glass substrate are minimized. The minimum gap and the aspect ratio of this structure is 2 /spl mu/m and 20, respectively. Without an additional frequency tuning method, it is demonstrated that the difference between the two frequencies is about 85 Hz, and the noise equivalent rate is 0.01 deg/sec at 50 mTorr pressure.