This work presents a single-chip battery-less neural recorder with 12 on-die microelectrodes. It can be powered wirelessly up to 16 cm away from a horn antenna at 915 MHz and only consumes 104 W dc power for accessing 10 enabled recording sites simultaneously, transmitting at 5 Mbps. The implantable device integrated with a flexible antenna weighs only 0.43 gram. In vivo measurements on an unrestricted mouse have been successfully conducted, showing response to visual stimuli.

We demonstrate a technique that automatically tunes the sensitivity of a radio-frequency (RF) interferometer with a tunable liquid attenuator by accurately changing its liquid volume. The obtained effective quality factor ( ) of the interferometer is up to 1×10 at ~5 GHz. The is ~100 times higher than previously reported results. When material-under-test (MUT), i.e., methanol-water solution in this work, is used for the tuning, a self-calibration and measurement process is demonstrated from 2 GHz to 7.5 GHz at a methanol concentration level down to 5×10 mole fraction, which is 100 times lower than previously reported results. Further investigations are needed to achieve better system stability and higher sensitivity.

We present results for the successful fabrication of low-loss THz metallic waveguide components using direct machining with a CNC end mill. The approach uses a split-block machining process with the addition of an RF choke running parallel to the waveguide. The choke greatly reduces coupling to the parasitic mode of the parallel-plate waveguide produced by the split-block. This method has demonstrated loss as low as 0.2 dB/cm at 280 GHz for a copper WR-3 waveguide. It has also been used in the fabrication of 3 and 10 dB directional couplers in brass, demonstrating excellent agreement with design simulations from 240-260 GHz. The method may be adapted to structures with features on the order of 200 μm.

A highly tunable and sensitive radio-frequency (RF) sensor is presented for the measurement of aqueous-solution dielectric properties. Two quadrature hybrids are utilized to achieve destructive interference that eliminates the probing signals at both measurement ports. As a result, weak signals of material-under-test (MUT) are elevated for high sensitivity detections at different frequencies. The sensor is demonstrated through measuring 2-propanol-water solution permittivity at 0.01 mole fraction concentration level from ~4 GHz to ~12 GHz. De-ionized water and methanol-water solution are used to calibrate the sensor for quantitative MUT analysis through our proposed model. Micro-meter coplanar waveguides (CPW) are fabricated as RF sensing electrodes. A polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic channel is employed to introduce 250 nL liquid, of which ~1 nL is effectively the MUT. The permittivity and the relaxation time of 2-propanol-water solution are obtained. Compared with our power divider based sensors, the differential reflection coefficients in this work provide additional information that complements the transmission coefficient methods.

This Letter presents a scattered-field formulation for modeling dispersive media using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Specifically, the auxiliary differential equation method is applied to Drude and Lorentz media for a scattered field FDTD model. The present technique can also be applied in a straightforward manner to Debye media. Excellent agreement is achieved between the FDTD-calculated and exact theoretical results for the reflection coefficient in half-space problems.