This study introduces a novel strategy for fabricating flexible nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) gas sensors based on Indium Oxide (In₂O₃) nanoparticles (NPs) employing selective reduction laser sintering (SRLS) technology. The SRSL technology utilizes ultraviolet (UV) laser selective reduction sintering to precisely and rapidly create oxygen vacancy (OV) defects in In₂O₃ NPs. These oxygen vacancies (OVs) enhance the active adsorption sites and contribute additional free electrons, significantly improving sensor performance at room temperature. The sensors demonstrate excellent response (S = 460.9 at 10 ppm), rapid response/recovery times (τ_resp/τ_reco = 27/570 s), and superior selectivity (response ratio > 400), in addition to robust resistance to light and humidity (under ppm-level NO₂ gas). The sensors also exhibit a low detection limit (200 ppb), a high signal-to-noise ratio (94.8 dB), and good long-term stability (25 days). Moreover, under photo-assisted conditions, the recovery speed of the sensors is further improved. This technology not only provides an innovative strategy for the development of high-performance flexible NO₂ gas sensors but also broadens the application potential of laser direct writing (LDW) technology in advanced materials and sensor fabrications.

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In this study, a convenient chitosan oligosaccharide laser lithograph (COSLL) technology was developed to fabricate laser-induced graphene (LIG) electrodes and flexible on-chip microsupercapacitors (MSCs). With a simple one-step CO₂ laser, the pyrolysis of a chitosan oligosaccharide (COS) and in situ welding of the generated LIGs to engineering plastic substrates are achieved simultaneously. The resulting LIG products display a hierarchical porous architecture, excellent electrical conductivity (6.3 Ω sq^-1), and superhydrophilic properties, making them ideal electrode materials for MSCs. The pyrolysis-welding coupled mechanism is deeply discussed through cross-sectional analyses and finite element simulations. The MSCs prepared by COSLL exhibit considerable areal capacitance of over 4 mF cm^-2, which is comparable to that of the polyimide-LIG-based counterpart. COSLL is also compatible with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) processes, enabling the fabrication of LIG/Au MSCs with comparable areal capacitance and lower internal resistance. Furthermore, the as-prepared MSCs demonstrate excellent mechanical robustness, long-cycle capability, and ease of series-parallel integration, benefiting their practical application in various scenarios. With the use of eco-friendly biomass carbon source and convenient process flowchart, the COSLL emerges as an attractive method for the fabrication of flexible LIG on-chip MSCs and various other advanced LIG devices.

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This research introduces a novel and convenient technology, chitosan oligosaccharide laser lithography (COSLL), enabling the creation of flexible laser-induced graphene (LIG) on-chip microsupercapacitors (MSCs) using environmentally friendly chitosan-class polymers for the first time. MSCs prepared through COSLL exhibit a significant areal capacitance exceeding 4 mF cm^-2, comparable to that of the polyimide-LIG-based counterparts. COSLL seamlessly integrates with the micro-nano thin-film process, allowing the capacitance of resulting LIG/Au MSCs to be further increased to about 8 mF cm^-2. Leveraging an eco-friendly biomass carbon source and featuring a convenient process flowchart, COSLL emerges as an appealing method for fabricating flexible LIG on-chip MSCs.

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This study introduces an innovative approach for fabricating flexible nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) gas sensors based on In2O3 nanoparticles (NPs) using selective reduction laser sintering (SRLS) technology. The SRLS technology enables specific chemical reduction reactions during the sintering process, achieving fabrication and control of oxygen vacancy defects and the porous structure in the In₂O₃ sintering region. The sensor exhibits exceptionally high sensitivity, fast response/recovery times, and superior selectivity for NO₂ gas detection, particularly at room temperature. Compared with traditional NO₂ gas sensor fabrication methods, this technology not only provides a potential way to fabricate highperformance NO₂ gas sensors but also further expands the application potential of laser direct writing (LDW) technology in the fields of advanced materials and sensor fabrication.

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This study introduces a high-performance flexible temperature sensor prepared using laser-induced graphene (LIG) doped with nickel oxide (NiO) nanoparticles (NPs). Unlike conventional LIG surface doping methods, we developed a nickel oxide-doped LIG flexible temperature sensor by introducing NiO NPs into a polyimide (PI) precursor solution cured into a film followed by ultraviolet (UV) laser treatment. This approach achieves a more stable and uniform doping process while further improving the sensing performance of LIG-based temperature sensors. Over a prospective temperature detection range (30-100 °C), the sensitivity of the NiO-doped LIG temperature sensor is significantly improved from -0.064% °C-¹ to -0.079% °C-¹, an improvement of 19.3%, compared to that of the intrinsic LIG temperature sensor, while maintaining high linearity (R2 = 0.999) as well as excellent temperature stability and reliability. This research not only enhances the performance of flexible temperature sensors based on LIG but also paves new pathways for its industrial production in various application fields.

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Flexible strain sensors play a crucial role in health monitoring, smart wearable devices, and human–machine interaction. Three-dimensional surface evaluation methods for strain sensors offer advantages by being closer to actual strain, featuring a larger working range, and being more suitable for multidirectional strain. In this study, a three-dimensional (3D) surface strain sensor based on polydimethylsiloxane/laser-induced graphene (PDMS/LIG) composite films has been developed. The electromechanical properties of this sensor, encompassing 3D strain range and sensitivity, can be adjusted by manipulating laser parameters and LIG patterns. The key to attaining these specific characteristics lies in the intentional design of crack types and orientations on the sensor's surface. Remarkably, the line-vertical (LV) sensor exhibits outstanding sensitivity with a GF of 211.3. The line-parallel (LP) sensor achieves a GF of 115.1. Additionally, it demonstrates a stretching range of 25% and maintains stable performance over an extensive number of strain/release test cycles (more than 3000 cycles). With these advantages, the 3D strain sensor can not only be applied in human activity monitoring but also monitoring pressure within microchannels in microfluidic chips, suggesting promising applications in the health and medical fields.

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Laser-induced graphene (LIG) has aroused a wide range of research interests ranging from micro-nano energy devices to the Internet of Things (IoT). Nevertheless, the non-degradability of most-used synthetic polymer carbon sources poses a serious threat to the environment. In this work, ecofriendly chitosan-based derivatives, including carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS), chitosan oligosaccharide, and chitosan hydrochloride, are successfully converted into LIGs for the first time via a convenient one-step CO₂ laser engraving at ambient air. The obtained LIGs are characterized by a three-dimensional hierarchical porous structure and exhibit good sheet conductivity. The consecutive carbonization and graphitization mechanism of target precursors induced by laser heat accumulation is also deeply discussed. Besides, based on a mechanically reliable LIG/CMCS composite film and tribo-negative acrylic/polyimide anti-layers, two contact-separation mode triboelectric nanogenerators are built and their power densities range from 1.44 to 2.48 mW cm^-2. These devices with long cycle life can be used for low-frequency mechanical energy harvesting and commercial capacitance charging, which could be potentially applied in the wireless sensor network nodes. Such a family of chitosan derivatives paves a new route for LIG synthesis and provides new ideas for ecofriendly LIG electronics.

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Short-wave ultraviolet (also called UVC) irradiation is a well-adopted method of viral inactivation due to its ability to damage genetic material. A fundamental problem with the UVC inactivation method is that its mechanism of action on viruses is still unknown at the molecular level. To address this problem, herein we investigate the response mechanism of genome materials to UVC light by means of quantum chemical calculations. The spectral properties of four nucleotides, namely, adenine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil, are mainly focused on. Meanwhile, the transition state and reaction rate constant of uracil molecules are also considered to demonstrate the difficulty level of adjacent nucleotide reaction without and with UVC irradiation. The results show that the peak wavelengths are 248.7 nm, 226.1 nm (252.7 nm), 248.3 nm, and 205.8 nm (249.2 nm) for adenine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil nucleotides, respectively. Besides, the reaction rate constants of uracil molecules are 6.419 × 10⁻⁴⁹ s⁻¹ M⁻¹ and 5.436 × 10¹¹ s⁻¹ M⁻¹ for the ground state and excited state, respectively. Their corresponding half-life values are 1.56 × 10⁴⁸ s and 1.84 × 10⁻¹² s. This directly suggests that the molecular reaction between nucleotides is a photochemical process and the reaction without UVC irradiation almost cannot occur.

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The fabrication of flexible pressure sensors with low cost, high scalability, and easy fabrication is an essential driving force in developing flexible electronics, especially for high-performance sensors that require precise surface microstructures. However, optimizing complex fabrication processes and expensive microfabrication methods remains a significant challenge. In this study, we introduce a laser pyrolysis direct writing technology that enables rapid and efficient fabrication of high-performance flexible pressure sensors with a micro-truncated pyramid array. The pressure sensor demonstrates exceptional sensitivities, with the values of 3132.0, 322.5, and 27.8 kPa^-1 in the pressure ranges of 0-0.5, 0.5-3.5, and 3.5-10 kPa, respectively. Furthermore, the sensor exhibits rapid response times (loading: 22 ms, unloading: 18 ms) and exceptional reliability, enduring over 3000 pressure loading and unloading cycles. Moreover, the pressure sensor can be easily integrated into a sensor array for spatial pressure distribution detection. The laser pyrolysis direct writing technology introduced in this study presents a highly efficient and promising approach to designing and fabricating high-performance flexible pressure sensors utilizing micro-structured polymer substrates.

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This paper proposes and simulates research on the reverse recovery characteristics of two novel superjunction (SJ) MOSFETs by adjusting the doping profile. In the manufacturing process of the SJ MOSFET using multilayer epitaxial deposition (MED), the position and concentration of each Boron bubble can be adjusted by designing different doping profiles to adjust the resistance of the upper half P-pillar. A higher P-pillar resistance can slow down the sweep out speed of hole carriers when the body diode is turned off, thus resulting in a smoother reverse recovery current and reducing the current recovery rate (d (Formula presented.) /d (Formula presented.)) from a peak to zero. The simulation results show that the reverse recovery peak current (I (Formula presented.)) of the two proposed devices decreased by 5% and 3%, respectively, compared to the conventional SJ. Additionally, the softness factor (S) increased by 64% and 55%, respectively. Furthermore, this study also demonstrates a trade-off relationship between static and reverse recovery characteristics with the adjustable doping profile, thus providing a guideline for actual application scenarios.

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In recent years, metal crack-based stretchable flexible strain sensors have attracted significant attention in wearable device applications due to their extremely high sensitivity. However, the tradeoff between sensitivity and detection range has been an intractable dilemma, severely limiting their practical applications. Herein, we propose a laser transmission pyrolysis (LTP) technology for fabricating high-performance flexible strain sensors based on (Au) metal cracks with the microchannel array on the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surface. The fabricated flexible strain sensors exhibit high sensitivity [gauge factor (GF) of 2448], wide detection range (59% for tensile strain), precise strain resolution (0.1%), fast response and recovery times (69 and 141 ms), and robust durability (over 3000 cycles). In addition, experiment and simulation results reveal that introducing a microchannel array enables the stress redistribution strategy on the sensor surface, which significantly improves the sensing sensitivity compared to conventional flat surface sensors. Based on the excellent performance, the sensors are applied to detect subtle physiological signals, such as pulse and swallowing, as well as to monitor large-scale motion signals, such as knee flexion and finger bending, demonstrating their potential applications in health monitoring, human-machine interactions, and electronic skin.

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This paper studied the behaviors of sintering between Ag nanoparticle (NP) and nanoflake (NF) in the same size by molecular dynamics simulation. Before the sintering simulation, the melting simulation of NF was carried out to calculate the melting points of NFs and investigate the thermostability of NF. The Lindemann index and potential energy showed that the melting points of NF were significantly size-dependent. During the heating process, the sharp corner of NF transformed to the round corner and could bend spontaneously lower than melting points. In sintering simulation, the sintering process of NF-NP showed a metastable stage before equilibrium. Under low sintering temperature (500 K), the degree of plasticity sintering mechanism of NF-NP was more prominent, which generated more defects, such as amorphous atoms, dislocations, and stacking faults, than NP-NP. The sintered products of NF-NP also presented a better neck size and shrinkage than NP-NP in the same size. A new sintering behavior was observed: NF was bent toward the NP during the sintering. The bending curvature of NF increased as the thickness or the length/width decreased. For the NF with the ratio of length/width to thickness of 5:1, bending could further significantly facilitate neck growth. At 700 K, the plasticity mechanism dominated both the sintering processes of NF-NP and NP-NP. And NF-NP showed a larger diffusivity than NP-NP. At last, we investigated the effects of crystal misorientation, and found that a tilted grain boundary generated in the neck. The NF had the trend of rotation to decrease the crystal misorientation.

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The wide-bandgap semiconductors represented by GaN have a broad application prospect because of their high service temperature and high switch frequency. Quad-Flat-No-Lead (QFN) Package is currently one of the mainstream packaging methods due to its low cost and high efficiency. However, the low reliability of QFN used in GaN devices is still a crucial problem caused by elevated temperatures and the thermal stress induced by the mismatch of coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). Therefore, it is necessary to control the temperature inner the package and increase the mechanical property of the bonding layer. In this paper, the finite element method (FEM) with thermal-mechanical coupling is performed to optimize the reliability of the bonding layer by adopting sinter nano Cu and silver. Based on the conventional QFN package module, we tried to add different metallization on the bonding surface to decrease the influence of CTE mismatch. We should note that the Anand viscoplastic model was used in the materials of Sintered Ag and lead-free solder paste presented by SAC305, which were the most commonly used in die-attachment. The results showed that the utilization of nano copper/silver paste could hardly facilitate thermal performance although sintered Ag had excellent thermal conductivity. Since the Anand modules of Ag and SAC305 were different, there were some impacts on the stress distribution and deformation. During the bonding process, a large thermal stress generated between die-attachment layer and Package or the PCB. The die-attachment layer formed by nano Ag paste suffered the smaller thermal stress because its CTE is comparable to that of thermal pad. In terms of sintered Ag, the bonding layer generated more elastic strain. As the deformation recovered to initial stage, the stress decreased because of the elastic strain. And we also found that the Ag metallization could decreased the maximum stress of model at heating stage. But Ag metallization suffered larger thermal stress as the temperature decreased. The selection of connection materials and metallization are a crucial part of design the structure of electronic package. And this paper could provide a reference for optimize the package structure to further improve their reliability in future works.

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Owing to the outstanding physical properties of graphene, its biosensing applications implemented by the terahertz metasurface are widely concerned and studied. Here, we present a novel design of the graphene metasurface, which consists of an individual graphene ring and an H-shaped graphene structure. The graphene metasurface exhibits a dual-resonance response, whose resonance frequency strongly varies with the geometrical parameters of the proposed metasurface, the carrier density of graphene, and the analyte composition. The transparency window, including width and position, can be artificially controlled by adjusting the geometrical parameters or the Fermi energy. Furthermore, the sensing parameters of the graphene metasurface for cancerous and normal cells are investigated, focusing on two factors, namely cell quantity and position on the metasurface. The simulated results clearly show that the theoretical sensitivity, figure of merit, and quantity of the graphene metasurface for breast cells reach 1.21 THz/RIU, 2.75 RIU (Formula presented.), and 2.43, respectively. Our findings may open up new avenues for promising applications in the diagnosis of cancers.

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Recent reports focus on the hydrogenation engineering of monolayer boron phosphide and simultaneously explore its promising applications in nanoelectronics. Coupling density functional theory and finite element method, we investigate the bowtie triangle ring microstructure composed of boron phosphide with hydrogenation based on structural and performance analysis. We determine the carrier mobility of hydrogenated boron phosphide, reveal the effect of structural and material parameters on resonance frequencies, and discuss the variation of the electric field at the two tips. The results suggest that the mobilities of electrons for hydrogenated BP monolayer in the armchair and zigzag directions are 0.51 and 94.4 cm2·V−1·s−1, whereas for holes, the values are 136.8 and 175.15 cm2·V−1·s−1. Meanwhile, the transmission spectra of the bowtie triangle ring microstructure can be controlled by adjusting the length of the bowtie triangle ring microstructure and carrier density of hydrogenated BP. With the increasing length, the transmission spectrum has a red-shift and the electric field at the tips of equilateral triangle rings is significantly weakened. Furthermore, the theoretical sensitivity of the BTR structure reaches 100 GHz/RIU, which is sufficient to determine healthy and COVID-19-infected individuals. Our findings may open up new avenues for promising applications in the rapid diagnosis of COVID-19.@en

The development of high-performance gas sensing materials is one of the development trends of new gas sensor technology. In this work, in order to predict the gas-sensitive characteristics of HfSe₂ and its potential as a gas-sensitive material, the interactions of nonmetallic element (O, S, Te) doped HfSe₂ monolayer and small molecules (NH₃ and O₃) have been studied by first-principles based on density functional theory. The results show that the adsorption of NH₃ and O₃ on pristine HfSe₂ monolayer is weak, and the adsorption strength can be significantly improved by doping O. And O-HfSe₂ is chemical adsorption to O₃ with large adsorption energy and transfer charge, and the band gap of O[sbnd]HfSe₂ disappears after adsorbing O₃, indicating that the adsorption of O₃ has a significant effect on the electrical properties of the substrate. These mean that O₃ is difficult to recover from the substrate surface, thus preventing O-HfSe₂ from developing into a sensitive material for O₃ detection. After doping S, the charge transfers and adsorption strength to NH₃ are the largest, but it is still small. So, the strain effect on the S-HfSe₂/NH₃ adsorption system is also studied. The results indicate that the adsorption strength of S-HfSe₂ to NH₃ can be enhanced by stretching S-HfSe₂ along x-axis. After absorbing NH₃, the conductivity of x-axis strained S-HfSe₂ changes, which suggest its sensitivity. And the predicted recovery times of S-HfSe₂ surfaces with ε_x=4%, 6% and 8% are 0.027 s, 1.153 s and 102.467 s, respectively, which suggests that the S-HfSe₂ monolayer has the potential to be developed as a sensitive material for NH₃ detection. These adsorption mechanism studies can also serve as a theoretical foundation for the experimental design of gas-sensing materials.

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Cu-Ag core-shell (CS) nanoparticle (NP) is considered as a cost-effective alternative material to nano silver sintering material in die attachment application. To further reduce the cost, the thickness of the Ag shell can be adjusted. Whereas the shell thickness will also affect the thermal stability of the Cu-Ag CSNPs. In this study, molecular dynamics simulation was applied to study the thickness effect on the thermal behavior of Cu-Ag CSNPs. The melting points of CSNPs and Pure NPs can be determined by the evolutions of Potential Energy (PE), and the Lindemann index (LI) of the system. The results indicated that the melting points of CS NPs were lower than monometallic NP and the melting point of CS NP is influenced by the size of the Cu core and the number of lattice mismatches. Moreover, the distribution of atoms’ LI showed that the premelting point is independent of shell thickness. However, the fraction of atoms that occurred premelting is increased with the decrease of the shell thickness. Otherwise, we also simulated the sintering process of double CS NPs with equal size.@en

On the basis of the development and application requirements of flexible DC transmission techniques, a 1 kA/10 kV half-bridge IGBT press-pack module is studied. The module is composed of three subunits in series, and each subunit consists of IGBT chips in parallel. In order to solve the problem of chips failure caused by non-uniform rigid-contacting pressure in the press-pack modules, the elastic-contacting structure is designed to ensure excellent electrical connection between chips and contact terminal. During the operating conditions, the heat generated by IGBT chips can induce the increasing of internal temperature of the module, affecting the reliability of the module. A cooling structure is introduced between the subunits to solve the heat dissipation problem of the module. In addition, the thermal analysis of subunit and the cooling structure is performed by using the finite element simulation, and the chip layout and water-cooling scheme are optimized. The testing of electrical parameters of the IGBT module is also conducted.@en

Nano copper sintering technology has great potential to be widely applied in the wide-bandgap semiconductor packaging. In order to investigate the coalescence kinetics of copper nano particles for this application, a molecular dynamic (MD) simulation was carried out at low temperature on a special model containing two substrate and multiple particles in between. Accordingly, thorough microstructure and dislocation investigation was conducted to identify the atomic-scale evolution in the system. The corresponding findings could provide evidence on the new particle-substrate sintering mechanism. Furthermore, atomic trajectories tracking method was applied to study the rotation behavior of different sized nano particles. New rotation behavior and mechanism were described. Additionally, the study on the size effect of copper particles on the sintering process and coalescence mechanism was conducted via comparing the microstructural and dislocation distribution of 3 nm, 4 nm and 5 nm models. Finally, by comparing the MSD results at low and high temperature for each model, the dominant coalescence dynamics changes were obtained.

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The limitation of Silicon based power MOSFET was broken by the super-junction (SJ) structure, which can provide lower specific on-resistance and higher breakdown voltage compared with the conventional power MOSFET structure. Multi-epitaxial and multi-ion-implant technology, as a mature manufacturing process of the SJ structure, has been widely used in the field of SJ-MOSFET. Therefore, this process is applied to construct the cell structure of 650V SJ-MOSFET in our study. Based on practical application, high current caused by unexpected short circuit will induce an increasing of the internal temperature of SJ-MOSFET, which leads to an irreversible damage in the SJ-MOSFET devices. However, the short-circuit robustness of SJ-MOSFET is still unstable, and the structure needs to be further improved. In our study, the electrical performance of a 650V SJ-MOSFET with offset P-pillar is theoretically investigated by means of technology computer aided design (TCAD) when the SJ-MOSFET is short circuited. The results clearly show that the optimized SJ-MOSFET can withstand the source-drain voltage of 400V for at least 10 μs in the case of the short-circuit. The thermal distribution and peak temperature of the cell structure of SJ-MOSFET are also simulated to assist in the analysis of the short circuit capable of the device. In addition, the hole current density distribution of two SJ-MOSFETs is considered to gain insight into the effect of P-pillar parameters on the short-circuit robustness. The result represents that the structure with offset P-pillar can effectively improve the short-circuit capability.@en