Mixed metal oxide nanomaterials have been demonstrated to be promising positive electrodes for energy storage applications because of the synergistic enhancement effects. In this work, nickel-cobalt-molybdenum metal oxide (NCMO) nanosheets with hierarchical, porous structures were directly developed on nickel foam (NF) through a hydrothermal method and ensuing annealing treatment. Electrochemical tests in three-electrode configurations revealed that the as-prepared NCMO nanosheets possessed high specific capacitance (1366 F g⁻¹ at the current density of 2 A g⁻¹), good rate capability (71.3% at the current density of 40 A g⁻¹), as well as excellent cycling stability (89.75% retention after 5000 cycles). Additionally, a hybrid supercapacitor was assembled and achieved an energy density of 46.2 Wh kg⁻¹ at a power density of 713 W kg⁻¹. Based on the systematic analysis of microstructure, morphology, and element compositions, the excellent electrochemical performance of the NCMO nanosheets could be attributed to the mesoporous feature, desirable compositions, excellent mechanical and electrical contacts, and fast ion/electron transportation rates. This study shows that the NCMO nanosheets offer great potentials for application in supercapacitors.

Au/Si eutectic bonding is considered to BE a promising technology for creating 3D structures and hermetic packaging in micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) devices. However, it suffers from the problems of a non-uniform bonding interface and complex processes for the interconnection of metal wires. This paper presents a novel Au/Si eutectic wafer bonding structure and an implementation method for MEMS accelerometer packaging. The related processing parameters influencing the Au/Si eutectic bonding quality were widely investigated. It was found that a high temperature of 400 °C with a low heating/cooling rate of 5 °C/min is crucial for successful Au/Si eutectic bonding. High contact force is beneficial for bonding uniformity, but the bonding strength and bonding yield decrease when the contact force increases from 3000 to 5000 N due to the metal squeezing out of the interface. The application of TiW as an adhesion layer on a glass substrate, compared with a commonly used Cr or Ti layer, significantly improves the bonding quality. The bonding strength is higher than 50 MPa, and the bonding yield is above 90% for the presented Au/Si eutectic bonding. Furthermore, the wafer-level vacuum packaging of the MEMS accelerometer was achieved based on Au/Si eutectic bonding and anodic bonding with one process. Testing results show a nonlinearity of 0.91% and a sensitivity of 1.06 V/g for the MEMS accelerometer. This Au/Si eutectic bonding process can be applied to the development of reliable, low-temperature, low-cost fabrication and hermetic packaging for MEMS devices.

We proposed a narrowband perfect absorber that was based on dielectric-metal metasurface for wide-band surface-enhanced infrared sensing. It is found that the narrowband perfect absorber can generate the hybrid guided modes with high quality-factor at infrared frequencies, which make the absorber highly sensitive to the surrounded analyte. Moreover, tuning the incident angle can actively modulate the resonant wavelength of absorber. Such an absorber with excellent features is employed to realize both refractive index sensing and infrared vibrational fingerprint sensing on a single substrate. It is demonstrated that a refractive index sensitivity of 1800 nm/RIU and figure of merit of 62 RIU⁻¹ can be obtained as the refractive index sensor. While, as a surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy substrate, two closed vibrational modes of analyte with nanometer thick layers can be effectively identified and selectively detected with 50-folds enhancement by actively tuning the incident angle without any change in the structural parameters (periodicity, width, height, and refractive index of the grating) of the device after fabricating. Our study offers a promising approach for designing high-performance surface-enhanced infrared optical sensors in the infrared region.

In this letter, we demonstrate a high-temperature dual-resonator Lamb wave tensile strain sensor which can achieve temperature compensation in a wide temperature range and has high strain sensitivities. This sensor consists of two identical AlN-on-SOI Lamb wave resonators (LWRs) adhered on a uniaxial tensile plate, with the wave propagating directions in the two LWRs parallel and perpendicular to the tensile axis, respectively. The most obvious higher-order Lamb wave modes, i.e., the A₄, S₄, and S₅ modes, in the “parallel” LWR present high strain sensitivities of 0.229 ppm/με (196 Hz/με), 0.480 ppm/με (431 Hz/με), and 0.222 ppm/με (205 Hz/με) all with minus signs, whereas in the “perpendicular” LWR, they demonstrate smaller strain sensitivities all with plus signs. The S₄ modes in the two LWRs have almost the same temperature coefficients. Based on the experimental results, a generally applicable beat frequency method with these two LWRs is proposed to realize temperature compensation as well as the high-sensitivity strain measurement.

Contact time is one of the most important properties for inertial micro-switches. However, it is usually less than 20 μs for the switch with rigid electrode, which is difficult for the external circuit to recognize. This issue is traditionally addressed by designing the switch with a keep-close function or flexible electrode. However, the switch with keep-close function requires an additional operation to re-open itself, causing inconvenience for some applications wherein repeated monitoring is needed. The switch with a flexible electrode is usually fabricated by electroplating technology, and it is difficult to realize low-g switches (<50 g) due to inherent fabrication errors. This paper reports a contact enhancement using squeeze-film damping effect for low-g switches. A vertically driven switch with large proof mass and flexible springs was designed based on silicon micromachining, in order to achieve a damping ratio of 2 and a threshold value of 10 g. The proposed contact enhancement was investigated by theoretical and experimental studies. The results show that the damping effect can not only prolong the contact time for the dynamic acceleration load, but also reduce the contact bounce for the quasi-static acceleration load. The contact time under dynamic and quasi-static loads was 40 μs and 570 μs, respectively.

The fabrication and measurement results of the vibration energy harvester arrays based on the piezoelectric aluminum nitride (AlN) film are presented. The structure design and fabrication process of the device are introduced. The key material, the AlN film with crystal orientation (002), was deposited by pulsed-DC magnetron sputtering and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The resonant frequency, power out, and the open circuit voltage of the device are detected. The optimized load of 80 kΩ and a remarkable maximum power out of 30.4 μW are obtained when the acceleration of 0.9g (g is standard gravity acceleration) is applied.