The self-assembly of known good dies (KGDs) on substrates using the liquid capillary method is shown to be a promising technology to achieve three-dimensional (3D) heterogeneous system integration and packaging. Firstly, the effects of the edge structures of self-assembled substrates and chips on alignment accuracies were investigated. When hydrophobic sidewalls with 10-µm-height steps were applied to both chips and assembly sites formed on substrates, the alignment accuracy within 1.0 µm was realized. The alignment accuracies were within 2.0 µm using either substrates or chips having 10-µm-height step structures with hydrophobic sidewalls. Self-assembly of 12-ch vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with a long rectangle shape on glass substrates were also demonstrated. Separation of assembly sites into twelve areas enhanced the resultant force acting on the VCSEL short edge. The enhanced resultant force provided the high alignment accuracies within 2.0 μm. After the self-assembly of the VCSEL and the subsequent thermal compression, the chips successfully exhibited no degradation of their current–voltage (I–V) characteristics and appropriate 850-nm light emission. We demonstrated self-assembly and microbump bonding using non-conductive film (NCF)-covered dies with Cu/Sn microbumps for high-throughput and high-yield multichip-to-wafer 3D integration. The self-assembly of the NCF-covered dies provided high alignment accuracy within 1.1 μm on average. After the self-assembly of NCF-coved dies and thermal compression, microbump chains composed of 7396 bump joints were successfully obtained, resulting in good electrical properties of 32 mΩ/joint without any bridge shorts and failures. The variations of microbump joint resistance were maintained within 5% of the initial value after thermal cycle testing of even 1000 cycles.

Structural and magnetic properties of nanocrystalline P6/mmm R(Fe,M)9C are presented. Their structure is explained with a model based on the R1–s(Fe,M)5+2s formula (s = vacancy rate) where s R atoms are statistically substituted by s transition metal pairs. The maximum coercivity is obtained for low Ga/Si content for auto-coherent diffraction domain size 30 nm. This controlled microstructure might lead to hard permanent magnet materials. Furthermore, the influence of small amount of Dy substitution on magnetocaloric properties of R-Fe systme is reported. The potential for using these low-cost iron based nanostructured RFe9 powders in magnetic refrigeration at room temperature is also discussed.

We are reporting an approach to prepare bulk foils of α″-Fe16N2 that can be directly obtained from a melt spinning process. The diffraction peaks from α″-Fe16N2 phase were found in X-ray diffraction spectrum of the foil, for which a nitrogen composition of 8.7at% was found by Auger electron spectroscopy. The microstructure of this melt spun foil was analyzed. We found 600 nm subgrains inside 8 μm grains for this foil. The coercivity of the α″-Fe16N2 foil was found as 222 Oe with a saturation magnetization of 223 emu/g. We analyzed the coercivity based on the microstructure and proposed a model to explain how to further improve it in melt spun FeN foils.

The boron-content dependence of magnetic domain structures and magnetic properties of nanocrystalline Zr16Co82.5−x Mo1.5Bx (x = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4) melt-spun ribbons have been investigated. Compared to x = 0, the smaller average domain size with a relatively short magnetic correlation length of 120 nm and largest root-mean-square phase shift value of 0.94° are observed for x = 1. The best magnetic properties of coercivity H c = 5.4 kOe, maximum energy product (BH) max = 4.1 MGOe, and saturation polarization J s = 7.8 kG, were obtained for the ribbon with x = 1. The optimal B addition enhances the content of hard magnetic phase, promotes magnetic domain structure refinement, and increases the surface roughness, results in the enhancement of magnetic anisotropy, and thus leads to a significant increase in coercivity and energy product in this sample.

Magnetic core shell nanoparticles (NPs) have potential for applications in magnetic random access memory, spintronic devices, and drug delivery systems. Our investigations are focused on the synthesis of inverted core shell nanoparticles and characterization of their structural and magnetic properties. By using our hydrothermal nanophase epitaxy technique, we are able to synthesize well-ordered α-Cr2O3@α-MxCr2-xO3 (M = Co, Ni, Mn, Fe) inverted core-shell nanoparticles. This typically results in the formation of novel phases of MxCr2-xO3 shells having ferromagnetic/ferrimagnetic (FM/FiM) spin ordering and an antiferromagnetic (AFM) Cr2O3 core structure. The combined results from XRD and high-resolution TEM (HRTEM) provide evidence of the presence of corundum phase both in the shell and in the core regions. HRTEM results also show a sharp interface exhibiting epitaxial atomic registry of shell atoms over highly ordered core atoms whereas TEM-EDX analyses show that the M atoms reside predominantly in the shell regions. The XPS analyses of the NPs indicate the M transition metals incorporated in the shell are in the +2 oxidation state. Magnetic measurements show well developed hysteresis loops: The field cooled hysteresis loops reveal horizontal shifts in the applied field axis and vertical shifts in the magnetization axis, relative to the zero-field cooled hysteresis loops. This provides direct evidence for the exchange bias effect between the AFM α-Cr2O3 core and the FM/FiM α-MxCr2-xO3 shell. The XPS data are consistent with oxygen vacancy formation in order to maintain charge neutrality upon substitution of the M2+ ion for the Cr3+ ion in the α-MxCr2-xO3 shell. The FM/FiM ordering in the shell may at least partially result from the F-center exchange coupling between the oxygen-vacancy induced bound magnetic polaron and nearby cations.

The paper presents the research results of influence of various parameters of magnetic field concentrator geometry on sensitivity of magnetically controlled MEMS switches. It is shown that magnetic sensitivity increases with the growth of the magnetic concentrator width and practically does not depend on its length. It is established that dependence of magnetic sensitivity on the overlap length of the ferromagnetic flexible contact-concentrator has a minimum corresponding to 2-3 lengths of the contact gap. Recommendations on sensitivity increase of magnetically controlled MEMS switches are provided.

The search for high-efficiency and environmentally benign water splitting catalysts has been on the rise since this process is a source of renewable, clean energy. However the process is inherently slow, especially for the production of O2 from H2O (water oxidation) due to the high electron count and energy intensive bond formation of the reaction. Hence the search for novel catalysts for oxygen evolution reactions (OER) has led researchers to focus on various families of compounds including oxides and recently selenides. Multifunctional nanostructures containing the semiconductor electrocatalyst grafted onto an optically active metallic component might boost the catalytic activity even further due to efficient charge injection. Magnetically active catalysts will also be lucrative since that might induce better adhesion of the oxygenated species at the catalytically active site. In this report we introduce multifunctional, magnetic Au3Pd–CoSe nanostructures as high-efficiency OER electrocatalysts. These multifunctional nanostructures were synthesized by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reaction with cobalt acetylacetonate and elemental selenium on Au-Pd sputter coated silica substrate at 800°C. The morphology of these multifunctional nanostructures were mostly bifunctional Janus-like nanoparticles as seen through scanning and transmission electron microscopy. They also showed soft ferromagnetic behavior. These bifunctional nanoparticles were coated on the anodes of a water oxidation cell and it was observed that these nanoparticles showed a higher OER activity with lower onset potential for O2 evolution as compared to the conventional oxide-based OER electrocatalysts.

Nano-inkjet printing using an Electrohydrodynamic's (EHD) pulsed cone-jet approach has the potential to bring affordable additive manufacturing to the micro and nanoscale. Ink technology is a major limitation of current EHD techniques. Specifically, most EHD printing processes print either nanoparticles or polymers. The materials are structurally weak and often have poor electrical or mechanical properties. For example, printing nanoparticles effectively creates a cluster of nanoparticles that must be sintered to create a continuous material. To address these issues, we have been adapting reactive inks to work with an EHD pulsed cone-jet. Specifically, we demonstrate that silver micron-scale structures can be printed using an EHD pulsed cone-jet regime. These inks produce solid structures without sintering steps and with good electrical properties.1,2 This work shows that reactive ink chemistries can be combined with EHD printing to produce fine-resolution features consisting of solid metal without an annealing step.

Flexible electronics has emerged as a very promising field, in particular,wearable, bendable, and stretchable strain sensors with high sensitivity which could be used for human motion detection, sports performance monitoring, etc. In this paper, a highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor composed of reduced graphene oxide foam and elastomer composite is fabricated by assembly and followed by a polymer immersing process. The strain sensor has demonstrated high stretchability and sensitivity. Furthermore, the device was employed for gauging muscle-induced strain which results in high sensitivity and reproducibility. The developed strain sensors showed great application potential in fields of biomechanical systems.