A Comparison of Different Strategies for The Modification of Quartz Tuning Forks Based Mass Sensitive Sensors Using Natural Melanin Nanoparticles

Author(s):  
Derya Demir ◽  
Sude Gundogdu ◽  
Seyda Kilic ◽  
Tugce Kartallioglu ◽  
Yusuf Alkan ◽  
...  

Quartz tuning fork (QTF) is a measurement tool that is gaining attraction nowadays due to remarkable features like their low cost, stable resonance frequency, and considerably low working frequency. However how to functionalize a QTF as a chemical or a physical sensor is still an important problem that needs to be solved for a widespread usage. This paper describes approaches to functionalize QTFs by utilizing melanin nanoparticles (MNP) in order to create a recognition layer for the creation of a target specific mass sensitive biosensor. In order to achieve this aim, electroplating and dip coating methods are chosen for their relative ease of use and cheap operating costs for the purpose of being industry-friendly and reproducible as a product for field applications. Moreover a comparative study on chemical etching of QTFs was conducted with the goal of improving MNP attachment during dip coating process.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-118
Author(s):  
Bahtiar Wilantara ◽  
Raharjo Raharjo

This study aims to develop an analog compression tester measuring instrument into a digital compression tester as a measurement tool that can provide effectiveness and efficiency to users.                     This research is a research and development or R&D. This research was conducted in several steps, namely: problem identification, information gathering, product design, product manufacture, expert validation, product revision, testing, final production. The development of analog compression tester was first validated by material experts, media experts, and 15 students, and 5 students for field trials. The subjects of this study were vocational students at Taman Karya Madya Teknik Kebumen. Data collection techniques used in this study using instruments in the form of a questionnaire. The data analysis technique of this research is descriptive qualitative and quantitative descriptive percentage.                 The results of the development of digital compression tester designs are: 1) the tools and materials used are electric drill, grinding, cutter, goggles, gloves, masks, ruler, acetaminine welding, screwdriver, scissors, digital dial pressure gauge, hose, spark plugs, clamps , and nepel, 2) the manufacturing process that starts from the cutting process, the hole drilling process, the welding process and the process of connecting between components, 3) the workings of digital compression tester design that is reading the pressure or compression of the machine displayed on the monitor digitally using dial pressure digital gauge, 4) the test results obtained from the validation results from: a) material experts at 89% or Eligible; b) media experts at 85% or reasonable; c) response of field trial students in terms of ease of use and reading of 90% or feasible. Thus, the conclusion that the digital compression tester measuring instrument declared feasible to use for measurement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (03) ◽  
pp. 145-151
Author(s):  
Shimpei Ono ◽  
Hiroyuki Ohi ◽  
Rei Ogawa

AbstractSince propeller flaps are elevated as island flaps and most often nourished by a single perforator nearby the defect, it is challenging to change the flap design intraoperatively when a reliable perforator cannot be found where expected to exist. Thus, accurate preoperative mapping of perforators is essential in the safe planning of propeller flaps. Various methods have been reported so far: (1) handheld acoustic Doppler sonography (ADS), (2) color duplex sonography (CDS), (3) perforator computed tomographic angiography (P-CTA), and (4) magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). To facilitate the preoperative perforator assessment, P-CTA is currently considered as the gold standard imaging tool in revealing the three-dimensional anatomical details of perforators precisely. Nevertheless, ADS remains the most widely used tool due to its low cost, faster learning, and ease of use despite an undesirable number of false-positive results. CDS can provide hemodynamic characteristics of the perforator and is a valid and safer alternative particularly in patients in whom ionizing radiation and/or contrast exposure should be limited. Although MRA is less accurate in detecting smaller perforators of caliber less than 1.0 mm and the intramuscular course of perforators at the present time, MRA is expected to improve in the future due to the recent developments in technology, making it as accurate as P-CTA. Moreover, it provides the advantage of being radiation-free with fewer contrast reactions.


Lab on a Chip ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin Hong Ooi ◽  
Raja Vadivelu ◽  
Jing Jin ◽  
Sreejith Kamalalayam Rajan ◽  
Pradip Singha ◽  
...  

Liquid marbles are droplets with volume typically on the order of microliters coated with hydrophobic powder. The versatility, ease of use and low cost make liquid marbles an attractive platform...


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (15) ◽  
pp. 4607
Author(s):  
Dounia Elfadil ◽  
Abderrahman Lamaoui ◽  
Flavio Della Pelle ◽  
Aziz Amine ◽  
Dario Compagnone

Detection of relevant contaminants using screening approaches is a key issue to ensure food safety and respect for the regulatory limits established. Electrochemical sensors present several advantages such as rapidity; ease of use; possibility of on-site analysis and low cost. The lack of selectivity for electrochemical sensors working in complex samples as food may be overcome by coupling them with molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). MIPs are synthetic materials that mimic biological receptors and are produced by the polymerization of functional monomers in presence of a target analyte. This paper critically reviews and discusses the recent progress in MIP-based electrochemical sensors for food safety. A brief introduction on MIPs and electrochemical sensors is given; followed by a discussion of the recent achievements for various MIPs-based electrochemical sensors for food contaminants analysis. Both electropolymerization and chemical synthesis of MIP-based electrochemical sensing are discussed as well as the relevant applications of MIPs used in sample preparation and then coupled to electrochemical analysis. Future perspectives and challenges have been eventually given.


Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 785
Author(s):  
Chow Shing Shin ◽  
Yu Chia Chang

Lattice structures are superior to stochastic foams in mechanical properties and are finding increasing applications. Their properties can be tailored in a wide range through adjusting the design and dimensions of the unit cell, changing the constituent materials as well as forming into hierarchical structures. In order to achieve more levels of hierarchy, the dimensions of the fundamental lattice have to be small enough. Although lattice size of several microns can be fabricated using the two-photon polymerization technique, sophisticated and costly equipment is required. To balance cost and performance, a low-cost high resolution micro-stereolithographic system has been developed in this work based on a commercial digital light processing (DLP) projector. Unit cell lengths as small as 100 μm have been successfully fabricated. Decreasing the unit cell size from 150 to 100 μm increased the compressive stiffness by 26%. Different pretreatments to facilitate the electroless plating of nickel on the lattice structure have been attempted. A pretreatment of dip coating in a graphene suspension is the most successful and increased the strength and stiffness by 5.3 and 3.6 times, respectively. Even a very light and incomplete nickel plating in the interior has increase the structural stiffness and strength by more than twofold.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (22) ◽  
pp. 4916 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiaoyun Wu ◽  
Yunzhe Zhang ◽  
Qian Yang ◽  
Ning Yuan ◽  
Wei Zhang

The vital importance of rapid and accurate detection of food borne pathogens has driven the development of biosensor to prevent food borne illness outbreaks. Electrochemical DNA biosensors offer such merits as rapid response, high sensitivity, low cost, and ease of use. This review covers the following three aspects: food borne pathogens and conventional detection methods, the design and fabrication of electrochemical DNA biosensors and several techniques for improving sensitivity of biosensors. We highlight the main bioreceptors and immobilizing methods on sensing interface, electrochemical techniques, electrochemical indicators, nanotechnology, and nucleic acid-based amplification. Finally, in view of the existing shortcomings of electrochemical DNA biosensors in the field of food borne pathogen detection, we also predict and prospect future research focuses from the following five aspects: specific bioreceptors (improving specificity), nanomaterials (enhancing sensitivity), microfluidic chip technology (realizing automate operation), paper-based biosensors (reducing detection cost), and smartphones or other mobile devices (simplifying signal reading devices).


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Suphawimon Phawinee ◽  
Jing-Fang Cai ◽  
Zhe-Yu Guo ◽  
Hao-Ze Zheng ◽  
Guan-Chen Chen

Internet of Things is considerably increasing the levels of convenience at homes. The smart door lock is an entry product for smart homes. This work used Raspberry Pi, because of its low cost, as the main control board to apply face recognition technology to a door lock. The installation of the control sensing module with the GPIO expansion function of Raspberry Pi also improved the antitheft mechanism of the door lock. For ease of use, a mobile application (hereafter, app) was developed for users to upload their face images for processing. The app sends the images to Firebase and then the program downloads the images and captures the face as a training set. The face detection system was designed on the basis of machine learning and equipped with a Haar built-in OpenCV graphics recognition program. The system used four training methods: convolutional neural network, VGG-16, VGG-19, and ResNet50. After the training process, the program could recognize the user’s face to open the door lock. A prototype was constructed that could control the door lock and the antitheft system and stream real-time images from the camera to the app.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Ahmed Simon ◽  
B. Badamchi ◽  
H. Subbaraman ◽  
Y. Sakaguchi ◽  
L. Jones ◽  
...  

AbstractChalcogenide glasses are one of the most versatile materials that have been widely researched because of their flexible optical, chemical, electronic, and phase change properties. Their application is usually in the form of thin films, which work as active layers in sensors and memory devices. In this work, we investigate the formulation of nanoparticle ink of Ge–Se chalcogenide glasses and its potential applications. The process steps reported in this work describe nanoparticle ink formulation from chalcogenide glasses, its application via inkjet printing and dip-coating methods and sintering to manufacture phase change devices. We report data regarding nanoparticle production by ball milling and ultrasonication along with the essential characteristics of the formed inks, like contact angle and viscosity. The printed chalcogenide glass films were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. The printed films exhibited similar compositional, structural, electronic and optical properties as the thermally evaporated thin films. The crystallization processes of the printed films are discussed compared to those obtained by vacuum thermal deposition. We demonstrate the formation of printed thin films using nanoparticle inks, low-temperature sintering and proof for the first time, their application in electronic and photonic temperature sensors utilizing their phase change property. This work adds chalcogenide glasses to the list of inkjet printable materials, thus offering an easy way to form arbitrary device structures for optical and electronic applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8592
Author(s):  
Marcin Gąsior

During the last several years, a tremendous increase in the popularity of online shopping has been observed. There are several possible reasons behind it, some of them, like competitive pricing, convenience or low cost of information search, considered to be extrinsic, others—like ease of use of this channel, pleasure related to it or willingness to reduce social interactions—intrinsic. The purpose of this research is to evaluate another factor, i.e., consumers’ environmental attitudes, in the perspective of their possible relation with the perception and willingness to use online and conventional shopping channels. In order to achieve this, a self-reporting questionnaire was developed and the data from a representative sample of 1000 Polish Internet users was gathered. The research procedure included cluster analysis, whose objective was to identify groups of customers with similar composition of environmental attitudes and next, a set of Kruskal–Wallis tests, aimed at identifying differences in opinions on channels between these clusters. The research proved that large groups of consumers with consistent sets of environmental attitudes exist and the scope of differences between such clusters is not reduced to a unidimensional, “positive–negative” continuum. Furthermore, there are significant differences between clusters in the declared willingness to use online and conventional shopping channels—groups more environmentally-oriented are more willing to purchase online and trust online shops, although they neither perceive conventional retail in a more negative way nor directly prefer online over conventional channels. The nature of such a phenomenon is open to explanation and interpretation, nevertheless, the research proves that environmental attitudes should be included in future models of consumers’ channel choice.


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