Current Trends in Miniature Devices: Design, Fabrication, and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, with growing competitiveness in today’s fast-paced market, and ever-increasing customer expectations for higher-quality products, the need for technologies that can rapidly manufacture these components at an affordable price is increasing. Such technologies must be flexible to adapt to rapidly shifting market needs while possessing a lower environmental footprint. Hence, the technology’s capability to handle multiple materials and fabricate multi-material devices is significant, especially when it comes to fabricating compact smart devices, which are in high demand nowadays. In almost all industries, smart sensors, supercapacitor, actuators, and microchips are required, and such devices are expected to operate with higher functionality while being robust.

This Special Issue aims to cover topics related to innovations in the current trends in miniatured devices: design, fabrication, and applications for multiple applications ranging from medical to optical to electronics/opto-electronics to positioning ones. The design and fabrication of microfluidic devices, including paper-based devices and wearable devices, as well as sensors, printed circuit boards, and positioning systems, are topics of interest. Fabrication involves achieving the required geometry and functionality. Therefore, surface functionalization and the development of manufacturing technologies and design methods that enable the rapid and efficient fabrication of such devices or parts are also of interest to this Issue. Therefore, the three major topics that this Special Issue covers are:

• Design and fabrication of multi-material systems for various applications;
• Functionalization of the surface properties of microdevices for enhanced performance;
• Developments in manufacturing methods for fabricating special-purpose miniature systems;
• Innovations in technology-related design methods for more efficient, faster, and/or less costly fabrication.

Dr. Jana Abou-Ziki
Dr. Amirkianoosh Kiani
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• advanced miniature design/fabrication/applications
• miniature devices
• paper-based devices
• wearable devices
• multi-material fabrication
• surface processing
• surface functionalization