Kian Shen Kiang

Removal of Dental Biofilms with an Ultrasonically Activated Water Stream

Acidogenic bacteria within dental plaque biofilms are the causative agents of caries. Consequently, maintenance of a healthy oral environment with efficient biofilm removal strategies is important to limit caries, as well as halt progression to gingivitis and periodontitis. Recently, a novel cleaning device has been described using an ultrasonically activated stream (UAS) to generate a cavitation cloud of bubbles in a freely flowing water stream that has demonstrated the capacity to be effective at biofilm removal. In this study, UAS was evaluated for its ability to remove biofilms of the cariogenic pathogen Streptococcus mutans UA159, as well as Actinomyces naeslundii ATCC 12104 and Streptococcus oralis ATCC 9811, grown on machine-etched glass slides to generate a reproducible complex surface and artificial teeth from a typodont training model. Biofilm removal was assessed both visually and microscopically using high-speed videography, confocal scanning laser microscopy (CSLM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Analysis by CSLM demonstrated a statistically significant 99.9% removal of S. mutans biofilms exposed to the UAS for 10 s, relative to both untreated control biofilms and biofilms exposed to the water stream alone without ultrasonic activation (P < 0.05). The water stream alone showed no statistically significant difference in removal compared with the untreated control (P = 0.24). High-speed videography demonstrated a rapid rate (151 mm2 in 1 s) of biofilm removal. The UAS was also highly effective at S. mutans, A. naeslundii, and S. oralis biofilm removal from machine-etched glass and S. mutans from typodont surfaces with complex topography. Consequently, UAS technology represents a potentially effective method for biofilm removal and improved oral hygiene.

Three-Mask Polysilicon Thin-Film Transistor Biosensor

Biosensors are commonly produced using a siliconon-insulator (SOI) CMOS process and advanced lithography to define nanowires. In this paper, a simpler and cheaper junctionless three-mask process is investigated, which uses thin-film technology to avoid the use of SOI wafers, in situ doping to avoid the need for ion implantation and direct contact to a low-doped polysilicon film to eliminate the requirement for heavily doped source/drain contacts. Furthermore, TiN is used to contact the biosensor source/drain because it is a hard resilient material that allows the biosensor chip to be directly connected to a printed circuit board without wire bonding. pH sensing experiments, combined with device modeling, are used to investigate the effects of contact and series resistance on the biosensor performance, as this is a key issue when contacting directly to low-doped silicon. It is shown that in situ phosphorus doping concentrations in the range 4 × 1017-3 × 1019 cm-3 can be achieved using 0.1% PH3 flows between 4 and 20 sccm. Furthermore, TiN makes an ohmic contact to the polysilicon even at the bottom end of this doping range. Operation as a biosensor is demonstrated by the detection of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory biomarker for respiratory disease.

Contact resistance measurement of Ge2Sb2Te5 phase change material to TiN electrode by spacer etched nanowire

Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) phase change nanowires have been fabricated using a top-down spacer etch process. This approach enables controls over the dimension and location of the nanowires without affecting the electrical properties. Phase change devices based on these nanowires have been used to systematically investigate the contact resistance between GST phase change material and TiN metal electrodes. The specific contact resistance was found to be 7.96 × 10−5 Ω cm2 for crystalline GST and 6.39 × 10−2 Ω cm2 for amorphous GST. The results suggest that contact resistance plays a dominant role in the total resistance of GST memory device in both crystalline and amorphous states.

Large Gauge Factor of Hot Wire Chemical Vapour Deposition In-Situ Boron Doped Polycrystalline Silicon

Polysilicon piezoresistors with a large longitudinal gauge factor (GF) of 44 have been achieved using in-situ boron doped hot-wire chemical vapour deposition (HWCVD). This GF is a consequence of a high quality p-type doped polysilicon with a crystal volume of 97% and an average grain size of 150 nm, estimated using Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM) respectively. The measured minimum Hooge factor associated to the 1/f noise of the polysilicon piezoresistors is 1.4 × 10−3. These results indicate that HWCVD polysilicon is a suitable piezoresistive material for micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) applications.

Fermi Level Tuning of ZnO Films Through Supercycled Atomic Layer Deposition

A novel supercycled atomic layer deposition (ALD) process which combines thermal ALD process with in situ O2 plasma treatment is presented in this work to deposit ZnO thin films with highly tunable electrical properties. Both O2 plasma time and the number of thermal ALD cycles in a supercycle can be adjusted to achieve fine tuning of film resistivity and carrier concentration up to six orders of magnitude without extrinsic doping. The concentration of hydrogen defects are believed to play a major role in adjusting the electrical properties of ZnO films. Kelvin probe force microscopy results evidently show the shift of Fermi level in different ZnO films and are well associated with the changing of carrier concentration. This reliable and robust technique reported here clearly points towards the capability of using this method to produce ZnO films with controlled properties in different applications.

Photon tunneling into a single-mode planar silicon waveguide

We demonstrate the direct excitation of a single TE mode in 25 nm thick planar crystalline silicon waveguide by photon tunneling from a layer of fluorescent dye molecules deposited by the Langmuir-Blodgett technique. The observed photon tunneling rate as a function of the dye-silicon separation is well fitted by a theoretical tunneling rate, which is obtained via a novel approach within the framework of quantum mechanics. We suggest that future ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells can be made efficient by simple light trapping structures consisting of molecules on silicon.

Dataset for Reconfigurable phase-change photomask for grayscale photolithography

Data set to support: Wang, Q. et al (2017). Reconfigurable phase-change photomask for grayscale photolithography, Applied Physics Letters

Reconfigurable phase-change photomask for grayscale photolithography

We demonstrate a grayscale photolithography technique which uses a thin phase-change film as a photomask to locally control the exposure dose and allows three-dimensional (3D) sculpting photoresist for the manufacture of 3D structures. Unlike traditional photomasks, the transmission of the phase-change material photomask can be set to an arbitrary gray level with submicron lateral resolution, and the mask pattern can be optically reconfigured on demand, by inducing a refractive-index-changing phase-transition with femtosecond laser pulses. We show a spiral phase plate and a phase-type super-oscillatory lens fabricated on Si wafers to demonstrate the range of applications that can be addressed with this technique.

A novel top-down fabrication process for Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 phase change material nanowires

A novel e-beam free, top-down spacer etch process was used to fabricate sub-hundred nanometer Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ phase change nanowires. Naowires with a cross-section dimension of 50 nm × 100 nm (width × height) were obtained and phase change functionality demonstrated.