Fe and Co-doped (Ba, Ca)TiO3 Perovskite as Potential Electrocatalysts for Glutamate Sensing

Barium titanate (BaTiO3) and calcium titanate (CaTiO3) are renown perovskite-structured dielectric materials. Nevertheless, utilization of BaTiO3 and CaTiO3 in sensing applications has not been extensive. This study, therefore, aims at examining potential usage of BaTiO3 and CaTiO3 as enzyme-less sensors.  BaTiO3, CaTiO3, Fe-doped BaTiO3, Co-doped BaTiO3, Fe-doped BaTiO3, and Co-doped CaTiO3 (with Fe and Co 5 at%) were synthesized by solution combustion technique, compositionally and microstructurally examined, and tested for their electrocatalytic activities. All powders consisted of submicrometer-sized particles. Measurements of electrocatalytic activities in 0.01 M glutamate solution by cyclic voltammetry were performed. It was found that oxidation peaks occurred at applied voltage close to 0.6 V. Peak currents, which denoted electrocatalytic performance, were prominent in doped powders. Electrocatalytic activities of the powders were discussed with respect to chemical composition, microstructure, and electronic characteristic of the materials

Implantable CMOS Biomedical Devices

The results of recent research on our implantable CMOS biomedical devices are reviewed. Topics include retinal prosthesis devices and deep-brain implantation devices for small animals. Fundamental device structures and characteristics as well as in vivo experiments are presented

Optical and Electric Multifunctional CMOS Image Sensors for On-Chip Biosensing Applications

In this review, the concept, design, performance, and a functional demonstration of multifunctional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors dedicated to on-chip biosensing applications are described. We developed a sensor architecture that allows flexible configuration of a sensing pixel array consisting of optical and electric sensing pixels, and designed multifunctional CMOS image sensors that can sense light intensity and electric potential or apply a voltage to an on-chip measurement target. We describe the sensors’ architecture on the basis of the type of electric measurement or imaging functionalities

Wide field-of-view lensless fluorescence imaging device with hybrid bandpass emission filter

We demonstrate a highly sensitive lensless fluorescence imaging device with a wide field-of-view by using a hybrid bandpass filter composed of interference filters, an absorption filter, and a fiber optic plate. The hybrid filter shows high excitation light rejection characteristics even in a lensless setup. In this study, we fabricated a hybrid bandpass filter and improved fluorescence observation performance for a target with auto-fluorescence. The filter was combined with a large image sensor with an imaging area of 67 mm2. As a demonstration, a brain slice from a green fluorescent protein transgenic mouse was observed and fluorescent cell bodies were detected with the lensless imaging device

Wearable and Battery-Free Health-Monitoring Devices With Optical Power Transfer

Wireless epidermal wearable devices attract interests and expectations as a tool for personalized, low-cost health monitoring technology. The concept of the wireless attachable personal health monitoring devices has been more widely considered by combining them with biosensors. To bring the most advantage out of the structure of the epidermal attachable device, a battery-free approach was introduced to reduce the volume and extend the lifetime of the device. In this work, an energy harvesting technology and noninvasive sensor were applied with the attachable battery-free devices as a wireless power system and painless measuring system. A glucose sensor was used as an example to develop the wireless wearable device for diabetes-monitoring. The device consists of two functional parts: an optical power transfer and an electrochemical sensing part. The operation starts when the optical power transfer part accumulates power from series-connected photovoltaic cells and intermittently supplies the power to the electrochemical sensing part. In the electrochemical sensing part, an amperometric method was used for controlling the oxidation voltage and measuring a faraday current from the noninvasive sensor and current as brightness and duration of light pulses from a light-emitting diode (LED). The experiment results show that the device works as expected for a variety of glucose concentrations

Polarization Image Sensor for Highly Sensitive Polarization Modulation Imaging Based on Stacked Polarizers

In this article, We demonstrated an image sensor for detecting changes in polarization with high sensitivity. For this purpose, we constructed an optical system with a two-layer structure, comprising an external polarizer and polarizers on a pixel array. An external polarizer is used to enhance the polarization rotation while reducing the intensity to avoid pixel saturation of the image sensor. Using a two-layer structure, the two polarizers can be arranged under optimal conditions and the image sensor can achieve high polarization-change detection performance. We fabricated the polarization image sensor using a 0.35- μm CMOS process and, by averaging 50 ×50 pixels and 96 frames, achieved a polarization rotation detection limit of 5.2 ×10−4∘ at a wavelength of 625 nm. We also demonstrated the applicability of electric-field distribution imaging using an electrooptic crystal (ZnTe) for weak-polarization-change distribution measurements