Chronic recording of large populations of neurons is a valuable technique for studying the function of neuronal circuits in awake behaving rats. Lightweight recording devices carrying a high density array of tetrodes allow for the simultaneous monitoring of the activity of tens to hundreds of individual neurons. Here we describe a protocol for the fabrication of a micro-drive array with twenty ...

High sensitivity chemical and biological detection techniques and the development of future electronic systems can greatly benefit from self-assembly processes and techniques. We have approached this challenge using biologically inspired events such as the hybridization of single (ss)to double-stranded (ds) DNA and the strong affinity between the protein avidin and its associated Vitamin, bioti...

Here we demonstrate for the first time that strained silanes couple directly to gold electrodes in break-junction conductance measurements. We find that strained silicon molecular wires terminated by alkyl sulfide aurophiles behave effectively as single-molecule parallel circuits with competing sulfur-to-sulfur (low G) and sulfur-to-silacycle (high G) pathways. We can switch off the high conduc...

Tensile tests were performed in situ on an ultrafine-grained (UFG) Al-Mg alloy using a micro-tensile module in a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The micro-strain evolution was tracked and measured using digital image correlation (DIC). A fine random speckle pattern was required to achieve high resolution and accuracy of strain measurement using DIC. To produce the speckle pattern, a pattern...

We have developed a wireless-controlled compact optical switch by siliconmicromachining techniques with DC magnetron sputtering. For the optical switchingoperation, micro mirror is designed as cantilever shape size of 5mm×800μm×50μm.TbDyFe film is sputter-deposited on the upper side of the mirror with the condition as: Argas pressure below 1.2×10-9 torr, DC input power of 180W and heating tempe...

This work presents the micro-machined 2-D switch array for use on free-space optical interconnect platform integrated with a digital 1×8 de-multiplexer control circuit together. Moreover, this device employs electrostatic actuation for light beam directions control. The CMOS-MEMS array-based optical platform contains 10×10 circular micromirrors switching spots, the diameter of each mirror is ab...

The Omni-directional impact MEMS switch was designed and characterized for the purpose of impact sensing. In order to turn on the circle reliably, the connect time should be long enough, the structure of flexible electrode was designed to extend the holding time. The structure consists of electrode A and B, electrode A is the sensing mass simultaneously, the sensing mass is suspended by helix c...

Ab initio total energy calculations reveal benzene-dithiolate molecules on a gold surface, contacted by a monatomic gold STM tip to have two classes of low-energy conformations with differing symmetries. Lateral motion of the tip or excitation of the molecule cause it to change from one conformation class to the other and to switch between a strongly and a weakly conducting state. Thus, surpris...