Aiming at the use in low-invasive medical treatments, this paper reports a fabrication technique of silicon microneedle of conical sharp point. The electrochemical etching technique is employed for sharpening the tip of a pillar, which is diced from a silicon wafer. A finely smooth tip surface is obtained due to electrochemical etching reactions, and is effective for easy insertion. The fabrication method is based on inexpensive wet etching, which does not require expensive fabrication facilities such as deep reactive ion etching (DRIE). A sharp needle was successfully fabricated, the tip angle of which was considerably small and was distributed within the range from 15 to 30 deg. An experiment of inserting the fabricated needle into an artificial skin of silicone rubber was carried out. As the results, the resistance force during insertion was much reduced compared to those of two-dimensional sharp needles. Imitating mosquito's motion, the effectiveness of applying vibration to the fabricated needle during insertion was also confirmed. After biocompatible Parylene coating, puncturing a human skin was demonstrated assuming a lancet usage for the diabetics, in which the bleeding was surely observed.

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This paper proposes a cooperative operation of serially connected membrane filters toward adaptive blood cell separation system in order to overcome a restriction of a single membrane filter. Serially connected membrane filters allow that downstream filters extract blood plasma from residual blood at upstream filters. Consequently, it becomes possible to adapt filtering characteristics to changing properties of blood. We focus on trans-membrane pressure difference in order to prevent hemolysis. Our strategy can be realized as a miniaturized PDMS fluidic chip. Our laboratory experiment using a prototype shows that plasma extraction efficiency is improved from 34% to 75%. Toward an integrated system, this paper also demonstrates multiple filters are successfully integrated into a PDMS fluidic chip.

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This paper proposes a novel neural probe using flexible metal wire for wire bonding on LSI chip. Wire bonding technology can provide a number of flexible wire arrays. The proposed neural probe is used for a nerve interface for functional electric stimulation (FES) technology which assists the paralysis of living body function by a spinal cord injury. The flexibility of probe will provide low invasive and safe neural interfaces for the nerve tissue from a long term view. We employ a combination of wire bonding and laser machining for the fabrication of aligned flexible probes. Aligned bonded flexible metal wires on electrodes are converted to probe arrays by cutting the bridge between electrodes. Typical dimension of a bonding wire is several tens μm in diameter and is suitable for neural probe to be inserted into nerve bundles. Needle shape is formed by electro-polishing of cut edge. Proposed method can be benefited by advantages of wire bonding as the widespread technology in electronics industry. Developed flexible neural probe based on the proposed technology is estimated as a nerve interface by inserting to a sciatic nerve of a rat.

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This paper proposes a micromachined pyrolyzed polymer as a candidate for an ¹⁸F^- deposition electrode for application in positron emission tomography (PET). The electrical separation of ¹⁸F from H₂¹⁸O water has been studied for preparing a PET probe. Conventionally, a bulk material such as glassy carbon (GC) is used for the ¹⁸F deposition and recovery cell electrode. This study is the first trial using a pyrolyzed polymer as an ¹⁸F^- deposition and recovery cell electrode. A pyrolyzed polymer electrode is obtained through pyrolysis of batch fabricated polymer patterns while the GC electrode is provided as the bulk material. Pyrolyzed polymer prepared below 1000°C pyrolysis shows similar electrical conductivity as that of GC. Further comparisons between pyrolyzed polymer and GC using Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were carried out prior to determining the suitability of the material as ¹⁸F^- deposition and recovery electrode. The deposition and recovery yield of the pyrolyzed polymer electrode derived from the photoresist (AZ4620) at 1000°C was estimated to be 77% and 38%, respectively.

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For high resolution visual inspection in the narrow space of the human body, small diameter endoscope has been developed which utilize electromagnetically vibration of single fiber. Thin endoscopes are effective for inspection in the narrow space of the human body, for example, in the blood vessel, lactiferous duct for detection infiltration of breast cancer, and periodontal gap between gingiva and tooth. This endoscope consists of single optical fiber and photofabricated driving coils. A collimator lens and a cylindrical permanent magnet are fixed on the optical fiber, and the tilted driving coils have been patterned on a 1.08 mm outer diameter thin tube. The fiber is positioned at the center of the tube which is patterned the coils. When an electrical alternating current at the resonance frequency is supplied to the coils, the permanent magnet which is fixed to the fiber is vibrated electromagnetically and scanned one or two dimensionally. This paper reports small diameter endoscope by using electromagnetically vibration of single fiber. Optical coherence tomography imaging has also been carried out with the fabricated endoscope and cross-section image of sub-surface skin of thumb was observed.

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We have developed a method for constructing energy-saving sensor networks that are robust against external attacks to the sensor nodes. In our sensor network model, hierarchical sensor systems belonging to different classes that are ranked according to the hardware specifications for wireless communication and electric power source are used to form sensor networks with heterogeneous topological structure. Random attacks to the network cause the deficiencies mainly of terminal sensor nodes of the lowest class, which allows saving energy for establishing communication routes in the network.

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Tactile sensor consisted of micro-cantilevers has been developed to detect both normal and shear stresses, and have human-friendly surface. NiCr thin film is used as strain gauge having low resistance drift, although Si piezo-resistance gauge shows the large resistance drift induced by large temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) and its output is unstable. TCRs of NiCr films prepared by vacuum evaporation and sputtering (at RT and 600°C) are 0.054%, 0.082%, and 0.0065%, respectively, and are much lower than that of Si, 0.25%. As a result, reduction of resistance drift and stabilization of the sensor have been obtained by using NiCr thin gauge.

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We have proposed the thin film vacuum sensor that has a cantilever structure with new temperature difference sensors of the short circuit Seebeck-Current-Detection type thermocouple in order to get higher sensitivity in the higher vacuum range. Temperature difference, which should be zero under the higher vacuum, between microheater and thermally isolated heading area from the microheater is measured under the vacuum pressure. Even a little temperature difference in our new sensor can be measured in very lower vacuum pressure range by the signal amplification than that of the traditional Pirani vacuum sensor. In our experiments, the short circuit Seebeck-Current-Detection type thermocouple is used to measure the very small temperature difference. Measurement of very wide vacuum pressure range between 10⁵-10^-2 Pa is achieved by the prototype sensor.

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In Time-of-Flight (TOF) range image sensors using periodical pulsed light, there is a trade-off between the maximum range and range resolution. This paper proposes a range-shift technique for improving range resolution of the TOF range image sensor without sacrificing the measurement range. The range-shift operation uses a TOF range imaging pixel with periodical charge draining structure and several time-shifted short pulses. The use of the short pulse can improve the range resolution. The range image using the range-shift technique is synthesized with several sub-frames, each acquires one of the shifted range images. The use of the small duty-ratio pulse leads to reducing the effect of ambient light and improving the range resolution. The range-shift technique is tested with an implemented TOF range image sensor and it is found that the range resolution is improved to 2cm using a 10ns light pulse and 7 overlapped shifted ranges for the measurement range of 0.5m to 4.0m.

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The optical pickup of our Small-Form-Factor Optical Disc Drives (SFFODDs) requires a micro-objective whose profile is composed of two aspheric surfaces. However, it is difficult to fabricate a micro-objective with an arbitrary aspheric surface and high aspect ratio using conventional techniques. We propose here a new method to fabricate an aspheric micro-lens mold with high aspect ratio. This method uses the micro-loading effect in Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) and isotropic Reactive Ion Etching (RIE). The micro-loading effect is a phenomenon that leads to different etching depths depending on the aperture size of the mask layer used in etching. We fabricated an aspheric micro-lens mold for the prototype by using the proposed method after experimental evaluations of the micro-loading effect for a feasibility study. The profile of the first prototype was slightly different from the designed one according as the distance from the lens center increase. The profile error of the second prototype was reduced by using a mask that had multiple apertures with the smallest aperture located outside the area where the crater was formed. Our proposed method was found to be effective for fabricating a micro-lens mold with an arbitrary aspheric surface and high aspect ratio.

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