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Recently, there has been increasing interest in electrochemical printed sensors for a wide range of applications such as biomedical, pharmaceutical, food safety, and environmental fields. A major challenge is to obtain selective, sensitive, and reliable sensing platforms that can meet the stringent performance requirements of these application areas. Two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials advances have accelerated the performance of electrochemical sensors towards more practical approaches. This review discusses the recent development of electrochemical printed sensors, with emphasis on the integration of non-carbon 2D materials as sensing platforms. A brief introduction to printed electrochemical sensors and electrochemical technique analysis are presented in the first section of this review. Subsequently, sensor surface functionalization and modification techniques including drop-casting, electrodeposition, and printing of functional ink are discussed. In the next section, we review recent insights into novel fabrication methodologies, electrochemical techniques, and sensors’ performances of the most used transition metal dichalcogenides materials (such as MoS2, MoSe2, and WS2), MXenes, and hexagonal boron-nitride (hBN). Finally, the challenges that are faced by electrochemical printed sensors are highlighted in the conclusion. This review is not only useful to provide insights for researchers that are currently working in the related area, but also instructive to the ones new to this field.

Face recognition is one of the most sophisticated disciplines of biometric systems. The use of VCSEL in automotive applications is one of the most recent advances. The existing VCSEL package with a diffuser on top of a lens intended for automotive applications could not satisfy the criteria of the automotive TS16949: 2009 specification because the package was harmed and developed a lens fracture during 100 thermal cycle tests. In order to complete a cycle, the temperature rises from −40 °C to 150 °C and then rises again from 150 °C to 260 °C. The package then needs to be tested 500 times to ensure it fits the requirements without failing in terms of appearance or functionality. To this extent, the goal of this research is to develop packaging for 1 mm2 VCSEL chips with a diffuser on top that prevents fractures or damage to the package during heat cycle testing with multiple materials. The package was created using the applications SolidWorks 2017 and AutoCAD Mechanical 2017. The ANSYS Mechanical Structural FEA Analysis program simulated all packages for mechanical stress to guarantee that all packages generated were resilient to high temperature conditions. All packages exhibit no abnormalities and are robust for various temperatures ranging from low to high. Therefore, these packaged 1 mm2 VCSEL chips with a diffuser on top provide an effective approach for the application of VCSEL suitable in high temperature conditions.

High electron mobility transistor (HEMT) biosensors hold great potential for realizing label-free, real-time, and direct detection. Owing to their unique properties of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG), HEMT biosensors have the ability to amplify current changes pertinent to potential changes with the introduction of any biomolecules, making them highly surface charge sensitive. This review discusses the recent advances in the use of AlGaN/GaN and AlGaAs/GaAs HEMT as biosensors in the context of different gate architectures. We describe the fundamental mechanisms underlying their operational functions, giving insight into crucial experiments as well as the necessary analysis and validation of data. Surface functionalization and biorecognition integrated into the HEMT gate structures, including self-assembly strategies, are also presented in this review, with relevant and promising applications discussed for ultra-sensitive biosensors. Obstacles and opportunities for possible optimization are also surveyed. Conclusively, future prospects for further development and applications are discussed. This review is instructive for researchers who are new to this field as well as being informative for those who work in related fields.

The emergence of gallium nitride high-electron-mobility transistor (GaN HEMT) devices has the potential to deliver high power and high frequency with performances surpassing mainstream silicon and other advanced semiconductor field-effect transistor (FET) technologies. Nevertheless, HEMT devices suffer from certain parasitic and reliability concerns that limit their performance. This paper aims to review the latest experimental evidence regarding HEMT technologies on the parasitic issues that affect aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN)/GaN HEMTs. The first part of this review provides a brief introduction to AlGaN/GaN HEMT technologies, and the second part outlines the challenges often faced during HEMT fabrication, such as normally-on operation, self-heating effects, current collapse, peak electric field distribution, gate leakages, and high ohmic contact resistance. Finally, a number of effective approaches to enhancing the device’s performance are addressed.

Conventional pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMTs) with lattice-matched InGaAs/InAlAs/InP structures exhibit high mobility and saturation velocity and are hence attractive for the fabrication of three-terminal low-noise and high-frequency devices, which operate at room temperature. The major drawbacks of conventional pHEMT devices are the very low breakdown voltage (xGa(1−x)As (x = 0.53 or 0.7) channel material plus the contribution of other parts of the epitaxial structure. The capability to achieve higher frequency operation is also hindered in conventional InGaAs/InAlAs/InP pHEMTs, due to the standard 1 μm flat gate length technology used. A key challenge in solving these issues is the optimization of the InGaAs/InAlAs epilayer structure through band gap engineering. A related challenge is the fabrication of submicron gate length devices using I-line optical lithography, which is more cost-effective, compared to the use of e-Beam lithography. The main goal for this research involves a radical departure from the conventional InGaAs/InAlAs/InP pHEMT structures by designing new and advanced epilayer structures, which significantly improves the performance of conventional low-noise pHEMT devices and at the same time preserves the radio frequency (RF) characteristics. The optimization of the submicron T-gate length process is performed by introducing a new technique to further scale down the bottom gate opening. The outstanding achievements of the new design approach are 90% less gate current leakage and 70% improvement in breakdown voltage, compared with the conventional design. Furthermore, the submicron T-gate length process also shows an increase of about 58% and 33% in fT and fmax, respectively, compared to the conventional 1 μm gate length process. Consequently, the remarkable performance of this new design structure, together with a submicron gate length facilitatesthe implementation of excellent low-noise applications.

In this work, we fabricated graphene solution-gate field-effect transistor (SGFET) to investigate the pH sensitivity of carboxyl functional groups. The functionalization of graphene with carboxyl was achieved through anodization by applying a sequential potential scan from 0.6 V to 1.3 V in 0.1 V steps. Raman spectroscopy was used to determine the defect density of the graphene caused by the anodization. The sequential anodization in Carmody buffer solution at pH 7 had low defective effect on graphene structure and shows that the original structure of graphene was conserved. Furthermore, we measured pH sensitivity of the carboxyl-functionalized graphene at pH 2 to pH 12. The pH sensitivity was 32.6 mV/pH at low pH region and pH sensitivity measurement was saturated at high pH (basic region). The negatively charged surface of carboxyl-functionalized graphene caused weak pH detection in the basic region. The pH sensing mechanism of carboxyl functionalized graphene in the low and high pH region is discussed in detail. The reliability of the carboxyl-functionalized graphene SGFET device was evaluated by measuring pH sensitivity repetitively after anodization at different potential scans of 0.9 V, 1.3 V, 1.5 V, 1.7 V and 1.9 V which demonstrated in all cases that, the pH sensitivity of carboxyl functionalization on graphene SGFET shows a similar trend. This functionalization method allows the modification of the graphene surface for further uses in biosensing.

A transparent polycrystalline diamond field-effect transistor (FET) was fabricated and measured in room temperature measurements, which reveals comparatively high maximum current density and high breakdown voltage of more than 1000 V. A harsh stress environment is proposed for simple and time-effective reliability stress measurement of the FET using a method of 50 continuous cycles of 500-V voltage stress. A 400-nm-thick Al2O3 counter-destructive passivation layer was implemented on the FET for the stress measurements. Devices with wide gate–drain length ( ${L}_\text {GD}$ ) retain their FET characteristics after the harsh stress measurements by only 50% reductions maximum current density.

Diamond has unique physical properties, which show great promise for applications in the next generation power devices. Hydrogen-terminated (C–H) diamond metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) often have normally-on operation in devices, because the C–H channel features a p-type inversion layer; however, normally-off devices are preferable in power MOSFETs from the viewpoint of fail safety. We fabricated hydrogen-terminated (C–H) diamond MOSFETs using a partially oxidized (partial C–O) channel. The fabricated MOSFETs showed a high breakdown voltage of over 2 kV at room temperature and normally-off characteristics with a gate threshold voltage $\text{V}_{\mathrm{th}}$ of −2.5–−4 V.

In this paper, we report on the effect of carboxyl- and amine terminations on a boron-doped diamond surface (BDD) in relation to pH sensitivity. Carboxyl termination was achieved by anodization oxidation in Carmody buffer solution (pH 7). The carboxyl-terminated diamond surface was exposed to nitrogen radicals to generate an amine-terminated surface. The pH sensitivity of the carboxyl- and amine-terminated surfaces was measured from pH 2 to pH 12. The pH sensitivities of the carboxyl-terminated surface at low and high pH are 45 and 3 mV/pH, respectively. The pH sensitivity after amine termination is significantly higher&mdash, the pH sensitivities at low and high pH are 65 and 24 mV/pH, respectively. We find that the negatively-charged surface properties of the carboxyl-terminated surface due to ionization of &ndash, COOH causes very low pH detection in the high pH region (pH 7&ndash, 12). In the case of the amine-terminated surface, the surface properties are interchangeable in both acidic and basic solutions, therefore, we observed pH detection at both low and high pH regions. The results presented here may provide molecular-level understanding of surface properties with charged ions in pH solutions. The understanding of these surface terminations on BDD substrate may be useful to design diamond-based biosensors.