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Metal additive manufacturing (AM) has gained much attention in recent years due to its advantages including geometric freedom and design complexity, appropriate for a wide range of potential industrial applications. However, conventional metal AM methods have high-cost barriers due to the initial cost of the capital equipment, support, and maintenance, etc. This study presents a low-cost metal material extrusion technology as a prospective alternative to the production of metallic parts in additive manufacturing. The filaments used consist of copper, bronze, stainless steel, high carbon iron, and aluminum powders in a polylactic acid matrix. Using the proposed fabrication technology, test specimens were built by extruding metal/polymer composite filaments, which were then sintered in an open-air furnace to produce solid metallic parts. In this research, the mechanical and thermal properties of the built parts are examined using tensile tests, thermogravimetric, thermomechanical and microstructural analysis.

Improvement of the surface roughness and optical transparency of microstructures lithographically fabricated in APEX TM glass was accomplished through a post-etch anneal. An optimal dose of UV radiation is found to be 24 J g −1 for a wavelength of 280 nm, after which etch rate in HF acid and selectivity saturate. The anneal process, while originally designed to improve the surface roughness by reflowing, can be used to join multiple structures for the creation of optically transparent three-dimensional devices. The resulting glass microstructures demonstrate an average sidewall RMS surface roughness that is reduced from 0.7 μm to 32.7 nm which is adequate for optical signal detection across a wide frequency band that includes the visible spectrum.

This article investigates a device made from a porous silicon structure supporting a lipid bilayer membrane (LBM)fused with Epithelial Sodium Channel protein. The electrochemically-fabricated porous silicon template had pore diameters in the range 0.2~2 µm. Membranes were composed of two synthetic phospholipids: 1,2-diphytanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoserine and 1,2-diphytanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine. The LBMwas formed by means of the Langmuir-Blodgett and Langmuir-Schaefer techniques, at a monolayer surface tension of 26 m Nm(-1) in room temperature and on a deionized water subphase, which resulted in an average molecular area of 0.68-0.73 nm(2). Fusion of transmembrane protein was investigated using Atomic Force Microscopy. Initial atomic force microscopy results demonstrate the ability to support lipid bilayers fused with transmembrane proteins across a porous silicon substrate. However, more control of the membrane's surface tension using traditional membrane fusion techniques is required to optimize protein incorporation.

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