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This publication was based upon work supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Award No. REP/1/2880-01-01.

With the increased global population, it is more important than ever to expand accessibility to affordable personalized healthcare. In this context, a seamless integration of microfluidic technology for bioanalysis and drug delivery and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology enabled data-management circuitry is critical. Therefore, here, the fundamentals, integration aspects, and applications of CMOS-enabled microfluidic systems for affordable personalized healthcare systems are presented. Critical components, like sensors, actuators, and their fabrication and packaging, are discussed and reviewed in detail. With the emergence of the Internet-of-Things and the upcoming Internet-of-Everything for a people–process–data–device connected world, now is the time to take CMOS-enabled microfluidics technology to as many people as possible. There is enormous potential for microfluidic technologies in affordable healthcare for everyone, and CMOS technology will play a major role in making that happen., King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) (OSR-2015-Sensors-2707 OSR-2016-KKI-2880) Technology Transfer Office (TTO) GEN-01-4014

© 2016, National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Emerging classes ofconcentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules reach efficiencies that are far greater than those of even the highest performance flat-plate PV technologies, with architectures that have the potential to provide the lowest cost of energy in locations with high direct normal irradiance (DNI). A disadvantage is their inability to effectively use diffuse sunlight, thereby constraining widespread geographic deployment and limiting performance even under the most favorable DNI conditions. This study introduces a module design that integrates capabilities in flat-plate PV directly with the most sophisticated CPV technologies, for capture of both direct and diffuse sunlight, thereby achieving efficiency in PV conversion of the global solar radiation. Specific examples of this scheme exploit commodity silicon (Si) cells integrated with two different CPV module designs, where they capture light that is not efficiently directed by the concentrator optics onto large-scale arrays of miniature multijunction (MJ) solar cells that use advanced III-V semiconductor technologies. In this CPV+scheme ("+" denotes the addition of diffuse collector), the Si and MJ cells operate independently on indirect and direct solar radiation, respectively. On-sun experimental studies of CPV+modules at latitudes of 35.9886° N (Durham, NC), 40.1125° N (Bondville, IL), and 38.9072° N (Washington, DC) show improvements in absolute module efficiencies of between 1.02% and 8.45% over values obtained using otherwise similar CPV modules, depending on weather conditions. These concepts have the potential to expand the geographic reach and improve the cost-effectiveness of the highest efficiency forms of PV power generation.

Freeform (physically flexible, stretchable and reconfigurable) electronics can be critical enabler for advanced personalized healthcare. With increased global population and extended average lifetime of mankind, it is more important than ever to integrate advanced electronics into our daily life for advanced personalized healthcare. In this paper, we discuss some critical criteria to design such electronics with enabling applications.

We report short circuit current (Jsc) enhancement in crystalline silicon (C-Si) photovoltaic (PV) using low-cost Ohmic contact engineering by integration of Nickel mono-silicide (NiSi) for back contact metallization as an alternative to the status quo of using expensive screen printed silver (Ag). We show 2.6 mA/cm2 enhancement in the short circuit current (J sc ) and 1.2 % increment in the efficiency by improving the current collection due to the low specific contact resistance of the NiSi on the heavily Boron (B) doped Silicon (Si) interface.

In today's digital age, the increasing dependence on information also makes us vulnerable to potential invasion of privacy and cyber security. Consider a scenario in which a hard drive is stolen, lost, or misplaced, which contains secured and valuable information. In such a case, it is important to have the ability to remotely destroy the sensitive part of the device (e.g., memory or processor) if it is not possible to regain it. Many emerging materials and even some traditional materials like silicon, aluminum, zinc oxide, tungsten, and magnesium, which are often used for logic processor and memory, show promise to be gradually dissolved upon exposure of various liquid medium. However, often these wet processes are too slow, fully destructive, and require assistance from the liquid materials and their suitable availability at the time of need. This study shows Joule heating effect induced thermal expansion and stress gradient between thermally expandable advanced polymeric material and flexible bulk monocrystalline silicon (100) to destroy high-performance solid state electronics as needed and under 10 s. This study also shows different stimuli-assisted smartphone-operated remote destructions of such complementary metal oxide semiconductor electronics.

Hemorrhagic shock (HS) is the leading cause of death for people with traumatic injuries. The onset of HS is correlated with marked changes in the plasma vasopressin levels and some studies indicate that administrating vasopressin in the bloodstream can help stabilize the situation. This situation calls naturally for the use of implantable devices for both the monitoring and treatment of HS. In this work, we present a self-powered hemorrhagic-shock autonomous integrated device (hemoAID) that continuously monitors vasopressin levels and releases vasopressin automatically when levels drop below a certain threshold. We demonstrate that the device can operate at physiological concentrations of vasopressin, in sheep serum, thus paving the way towards the development of an autonomous implantable device for HS prevention.

The use of point-of-care (POC) devices in limited resource settings where access to commonly used infrastructure, such as water and electricity, can be restricted represents simultaneously one of the best application fits for POC systems as well as one of the most challenging places to deploy them. Of the many challenges involved in these systems, the preparation and processing of complex samples like stool, vomit, and biopsies are particularly difficult due to the high number and varied nature of mechanical and chemical interferents present in the sample. Previously we have demonstrated the ability to use solar-thermal energy to perform PCR based nucleic acid amplifications. In this work demonstrate how the technique, using similar infrastructure, can also be used to perform solar-thermal based sample processing system for extracting and isolating Vibrio Cholerae nucleic acids from fecal samples. The use of opto-thermal energy enables the use of sunlight to drive thermal lysing reactions in large volumes without the need for external electrical power. Using the system demonstrate the ability to reach a 95°C threshold in less than 5 minutes and maintain a stable sample temperature of +/- 2°C following the ramp up. The system is demonstrated to provide linear results between 10(4) and 10(8) CFU/mL when the released nucleic acids were quantified via traditional means. Additionally, we couple the sample processing unit with our previously demonstrated solar-thermal PCR and tablet based detection system to demonstrate very low power sample-in-answer-out detection.

Thinned silicon based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electronics can be physically flexible. To overcome challenges of limited thinning and damaging of devices originated from back grinding process, we show sequential reactive ion etching of silicon with the assistance from soft polymeric materials to efficiently achieve thinned (40 μm) and flexible (1.5 cm bending radius) silicon based functional CMOS inverters with high-κ/metal gate transistors. Notable advances through this study shows large area of silicon thinning with pre-fabricated high performance elements with ultra-large-scale-integration density (using 90 nm node technology) and then dicing of such large and thinned (seemingly fragile) pieces into smaller pieces using excimer laser. The impact of various mechanical bending and bending cycles show undeterred high performance of flexible silicon CMOS inverters. Future work will include transfer of diced silicon chips to destination site, interconnects, and packaging to obtain full...