A comparison study on the reliability of gold (Au) and copper (Cu) wire bonding is conducted to determine their corrosion and oxidation behavior in different environmental conditions. The corrosion and oxidation behaviors of Au and Cu wire bonding are determined through soaking in sodium chloride (NaCl) solution and high temperature storage (HTS) at 175 °C, 200 °C and 225 °C. Galvanic corrosion is more intense in Cu wire bonding as compared to Au wire bonding in NaCl solution due to the minimal formation of intermetallics in the former. At all three HTS annealing temperatures, the rate of Cu-Al intermetallic formation is found to be three to five times slower than Au-Al intermetallics. The faster intermetallic growth rate and lower activation energy found in this work for both Au/Al and Cu/Al as compared to literature could be due to the thicker Al pad metallization which removed the rate-determining step in previous studies due to deficit in Al material.

The effects of the sterilization process have been studied on medical grade thermoplastic polyetheretherketone (PEEK). For a reusable medical device, material reliability is an important parameter to decide its lifetime, as it will be subjected to the continuous steam sterilization process. A spring nature, clip component was selected out of a newly designed medical device (patented) to perform this reliability study. This clip component was sterilized for a predetermined number of cycles (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 20…100) at 121 °C for 30 min. A significant decrease of ~20% in the compression force of the spring was observed after 30 cycles, and a ~6% decrease in the lateral dimension of the clip was observed after 50 cycles. No further significant change in the compression force or dimension was observed for the subsequent sterilization cycles. Vickers hardness and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) techniques were used to characterize the effects of sterilization. DSC results exhibited no significant change in the degree of cure and melting behavior of PEEK before and after the sterilization. Hardness measurement exhibited an increase of ~49% in hardness after just 20 cycles. When an unsterilized sample was heated for repetitive cycles without the presence of moisture (121 °C, 10 and 20 cycles), only ~7% of the maximum change in hardness was observed.

Intravenous therapy is the standard medical procedure that is used for administering medications directly into the vein. The automated drug infusion devices are designed in such a way that they provide exact medication doses with safety measures included. On the other hand, this is why they must be regularly watched by healthcare providers. This paper introduces a cloud-based IoT drug infusion system that was developed to address remote patient care needs. This system enables remote, accurate, and secure management of medication delivery. Its key contributions include allowing healthcare providers to control and monitor IV infusions remotely while maintaining safety features. The system consists of a microcontroller that is responsible for data processing, a control system that oversees infusion rate regulation, and an IoT-based framework that allows for remote monitoring and alerts via a user-friendly web interface. This new approach to care will therefore improve patient care by providing remote management of medications.

In the present day, IoT technology is widely applied in the field of medical devices to facilitate real-time monitoring and management by medical staff, thereby better-ensuring patient safety. In IoT intravenous infusion monitoring sensors, it is particularly important to ensure that air bubbles are not infused into the patient’s body. The most common method for bubble detection during intravenous infusions is the use of infrared or laser sensors, which can usually meet design requirements at a relatively low cost. Another method is the use of ultrasonic detection of bubbles, which achieves high accuracy but has not been widely promoted in the market due to higher costs. This proposed work introduces a new type of sensor that detects bubbles by monitoring changes in capacitance between two electrodes installed at the surface of the infusion pipe. If this sensor is deployed on the ESP32 platform, which is widely used in embedded IoT devices, it can achieve 35 μL bubble detection precision with an average power consumption of 5.18 mW and a mass production cost of $0.022. Although the precision of this sensor is significantly lower than the low-cost IR bubble sensor, it still satisfies the design requirement of the IV infusion IoT sensor.

Technological advancements are propelling medical technology towards automation through the application and widespread use of automatic control, sensing, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Currently, IoT technology has been extensively applied in medical devices, aiming to ensure patient safety through more real-time detection and more effective management. In the monitoring of intravenous infusion, accurately sensing the infusion conditions in real time is particularly important. This article introduces a low-cost smart infusion device based on IoT technology, which controls the infusion rate with a peristaltic pump and monitors the volume of fluid delivered. It uses an improved, self-calibrating weighing sensor to achieve the real-time closed-loop control of the flow rate, ensuring patient safety. Additionally, the Blynk dashboard can be used for monitoring and controlling the flow rate and infusion volume.

A fluxless bonding technique has been developed as a method of flip-chip bonding for microelectronic packaging. The fluxless bonding technique can be achieved instantaneously in an ambient environment between metallic stud bumps and predefined molten solder. This paper describes the mechanics of the bonding action and verifies the effectiveness of this bonding method through wetting balance tests and scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive x-ray analysis. This technique has been demonstrated by using a gold stud bump to break the tin oxide layer over molten solder. This allows for a fast, solid liquid interdiffusion between gold (Au) and the fresh molten eutectic lead-tin (Pb–Sn) solder for joint formation during solidification. This bonding method has been successfully tested with $130\text{-}\mu \mathrm{m}$ -pitch flip-chip bond pads on a joint-in-via flex substrate architecture.