Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) serves as an indispensable process for achieving global planarization in semiconductor manufacturing, especially as integrated circuit (IC) technology advances to sub-7 nm nodes, where atomic-level surface flatness becomes crucial. Silica abrasives, which account for over 90% of the abrasive market in advanced CMP processes, operate not through simple mechanical grinding but through a key "chemical-mechanical synergistic" mechanism: chemically softening the wafer surface, then mechanically removing the softened layer to expose a new surface, which is further softened and removed, repeating this cycle to produce a smooth wafer. Despite their prevalence, conventional silica abrasives still face challenges, including relatively low material removal rate (MRR), a tendency to agglomerate, leading to poor dispersion and surface defects, and limitations in achieving ultimate surface uniformity. Significant progress has been made to address these issues. Development has progressed from simple spherical particles to complex structural designs (such as mesoporous, hollow, and raspberry-shaped structures) to enhance slurry transport and mechanical action. Surface chemical modifications (e.g., using amino or polymer groups) can improve dispersion stability and reduce scratching. Furthermore, composites with other materials (e.g., ceria, polymers) and precise control of particle size distribution are key to enhancing performance. These innovative approaches have yielded significant performance gains. State-of-the-art slurries have demonstrated the ability to achieve surface roughness below 0.1 nm RMS. The development of silica abrasives is increasingly focused on sustainability and smart manufacturing. A prominent direction is the design of biodegradable abrasives that disintegrate after use, thereby simplifying post-chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) cleanup and minimizing environmental impact—an approach fully aligned with green manufacturing principles. This review systematically summarizes the progress of silica abrasives for CMP over the past 60 years. This summary provides theoretical insights and forward-looking strategies to overcome the current limitations of abrasive technology. We believe this review will be helpful in advancing the field of CMP abrasives towards next-generation semiconductor manufacturing.
Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) inkjet printing has emerged as a powerful micro-/nanofabrication technique for high-resolution perovskite quantum dot (PeQD) color-conversion layers, offering precise control over pixel morphology, dimensions, and composition. This review systematically examines the mechanisms of cone-jet and electrostatic-attraction modes in EHD printing, highlighting recent advances in PeQD ink design, solvent and ligand engineering, and printing parameter optimization. Perovskite precursor and colloidal inks are discussed in detail, emphasizing strategies to enhance droplet ejection stability, suppress coffee-ring effects, and achieve uniform, high-luminescence pixels. Ligand exchange, dual-ligand passivation, and core−shell or polymer encapsulation are shown to effectively mitigate ion migration, surface defects, and environmental degradation, thereby improving photoluminescence efficiency and stability. Multi-channel and multi-nozzle EHD printing systems enable dynamic halide composition control and parallel RGB pixel deposition, facilitating ultrahigh-resolution patterning down to submicron feature sizes. Finally, the review highlights future directions, including synergistic PeQD material synthesis, advanced ink formulation, scalable high-throughput printing, and integration of PeQD color-conversion pixels into full-color micro-LED displays with minimal crosstalk and robust operational stability. These developments collectively demonstrate the immense potential of EHD inkjet printing for next-generation high-performance display technologies.
Aluminum scandium nitride (AlScN), an emerging Ⅲ-nitride semiconductor material, has attracted significant attention in recent years due to its exceptional piezoelectric properties, high thermal stability, tunable bandgap, and excellent compatibility with micro/nano fabrication. This paper systematically reviews the crystal structure, fundamental properties, and property modulation mechanisms of AlScN. It also summarizes recent progress in micro/nano fabrication technologies, including deposition, etching, and device integration. Furthermore, the applications of AlScN in diverse fields such as micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), RF communications, energy conversion, optoelectronics and sensors are discussed. Finally, current challenges and promising future research directions for AlScN are outlined.
Significant progress has been achieved in the field of organic solar cells (OSCs). Most devices with power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) exceeding 20% rely predominantly on active materials that incorporate D18 or its derivatives as the donor. In contrast, the PCEs over 20% have been realized as well for OSCs with the non-D18-based donor materials by simultaneously optimizing material properties, active layer morphologies and interface engineering, thereby demonstrating the potential to outperform D18 counterparts. Therefore, this review summarizes an overview of recent advancements in OSCs with the PCEs over 20% utilizing the non-D18-based donor materials, and highlights three critical aspects including molecular design strategies, the active layer morphologies, and the interface optimization. Their synergistic roles are advantageous in enhancing the exciton dissociation, facilitating the charge transport, and suppressing the recombination losses, accordingly supporting the improved PCEs over 20%. Furthermore, the challenges and valuable insights are discussed, which can lead to improved efficiency, scalable fabrication, and enhanced environmental and thermal stability, potentially accelerating the commercialization of OSCs.
Quantum control allows a wide range of quantum operations employed in molecular physics, nuclear magnetic resonance and quantum information processing. Thanks to the existing microelectronics industry, semiconducting qubits, where quantum information is encoded in spin or charge degree freedom of electrons or nuclei in semiconductor quantum dots, constitute a highly competitive candidate for scalable solid-state quantum technologies. In quantum information processing, advanced control techniques are needed to realize quantum manipulations with both high precision and noise resilience. In this review, we first introduce the basics of various widely-used control methods, including resonant excitation, adabatic passage, shortcuts to adiabaticity, composite pulses, and quantum optimal control. Then we review the practical aspects in applying these methods to realize accurate and robust quantum gates for single semiconductor qubits, such as Loss–DiVincenzo spin qubit, spinglet-triplet qubit, exchange-only qubit and charge qubit.
Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), leveraged by their unique volumetric doping mechanism and ultra-high transconductance performance, have emerged as a pivotal device platform for constructing high-performance bioelectronic interfaces. OECT-based theranostics aim to develop intelligent closed-loop systems that integrate sensing, decision-making, and execution, thereby overcoming the latency and discretization limitations of traditional medical models when managing dynamic physiological fluctuations. This article systematically reviews the performance evolution of OECT materials from p-type to n-type, discusses critical strategies for enhancing device stability and transconductance density, such as side-chain engineering and ladder-type molecular design, while emphasizing the essential role of complementary logic circuits in minimizing the static power consumption of implantable electronics. Furthermore, breakthroughs in OECT-based neuromorphic computing are addressed; by simulating synaptic plasticity (STP/LTP) and engineering organic electrochemical neurons (OECNs), a highly efficient sensing-computing closed-loop architecture has been realized. The current application landscape of OECTs in electrophysiological monitoring, neurochemical sensing, and multimodal synergistic sensing is detailed, alongside a summary of high-density array fabrication and system integration strategies, including 3D printing, inkjet printing, and 3D hydrogel integration. Finally, future outlooks are provided, focusing on challenges such as the environmental stability of n-type materials, multimodal signal crosstalk, and long-term clinical reliability.
The integration of proximity sensing into flexible tactile electronic skins (e-skins) represents a fundamental shift from conventional contact-only interfaces toward anticipatory perception systems. This mini-review provides a systematic examination of recent advances in proximity-augmented e-skins, which overcome the inherent latency of tactile sensors by extending sensory awareness into the pre-contact domain. We provide a comprehensive overview of five key sensing modalities—capacitive, triboelectric, magnetic, temperature-based, and humidity-based—detailing their operating principles, material innovations, and structural optimization strategies. System-level requirements for practical deployment are also critically analyzed. Representative applications in interactive surfaces, human–robot collaboration, soft robotics, healthcare monitoring, and integrated multifunctional e-skins are highlighted to illustrate the transformative potential of this technology. Despite substantial progress, challenges persist in seamless multimodal integration, scalable manufacturing, and intelligent data fusion. Future directions are discussed to realize robust, perceptually intelligent e-skins that bridge the gap between laboratory innovations and real-world applications.
Ion-migration memristive synaptic devices provide a physical route for hardware neuromorphic computing by using ionic redistribution, conductive-filament evolution, and interfacial barrier modulation to regulate synaptic weights. However, existing studies are often discussed according to specific material systems or individual device demonstrations, which makes it difficult to compare how different ion-migration mechanisms determine synaptic behavior, device stability, and integration potential. This mini review organizes recent progress from the perspective of operating mechanism and device type. Electrochemical metallization (ECM)-based synaptic devices are discussed with emphasis on metallic-filament formation and the challenge of achieving gradual and reproducible conductance modulation. Filamentary valence-change memory (VCM)-based devices are reviewed in terms of oxygen-vacancy channel evolution, while interfacial VCM devices are examined through interfacial ionic modulation and barrier-controlled analog switching. Hybrid ECM-VCM devices are further discussed as integrated designs that couple multiple ionic processes to balance switching window, stability, and multifunctionality. By linking mobile ionic species, switching pathways, and synaptic functions, this review provides a mechanism-based framework for understanding ion-migration memristive synaptic devices and for identifying the material, interface, and device-level issues that remain before scalable neuromorphic hardware can be realized.
Electromyography (EMG) is widely used in sports rehabilitation to evaluate muscle activation, coordination, fatigue, and functional recovery, yet reliable recording remains limited by the electrode−skin interface during repeated motion and prolonged wear. Microneedle electrodes offer a distinct interface strategy by penetrating the stratum corneum and forming lower-impedance, more stable electrical contact than conventional wet or dry electrodes. This review discusses microneedle electrodes for EMG acquisition in sports rehabilitation from a design−to−application perspective. We first clarify the interface requirements of EMG recording in rehabilitation settings and the technical rationale for using microneedle interfaces. We then summarize material and structural design strategies in silicon-, polymer-, and metal-based systems, focusing on how they balance penetration capability, mechanical compliance, stretchability, conductivity, and recording stability. Fabrication routes are further examined in terms of material-structure-process coupling, followed by applications in static assessment, dynamic motion monitoring, and clinical rehabilitation evaluation. This review integrates interface requirements, design, manufacturing, and validation to provide a structured overview of microneedle EMG electrodes' capabilities and limitations for sports rehabilitation.
With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable electronics, tactile sensors play an indispensable role in intelligent sensing systems. However, traditional tactile sensing systems follow the von Neumann architecture, where sensors and processing units are physically separated. This leads to frequent data transfer of large raw data volumes, causing high latency and energy consumption. Such bottlenecks cannot meet the requirements of real-time closed-loop control and edge intelligence. Inspired by the highly integrated “perception-storage-computation” mechanism of biological sensory systems, memristor-based neuromorphic computing offers a groundbreaking solution beyond conventional approaches. Memristors combine non-volatile storage with tunable resistance. They enable in-situ emulation of synaptic plasticity, in-memory computing, and brain-inspired processing, thereby holding the potential to significantly improve the energy efficiency and response speed of tactile systems. This review systematically discusses the physical mechanisms of mainstream memristors, highlights recent progress in memristor-based neuromorphic computing for tactile sensing, and outlines key challenges and future directions for neuromorphic tactile perception systems.
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