There are a few reports of successful replacement of the left-sided systemic tricuspid valve with a mechanical valve in small infants with congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries having Ebstein’s anomaly. Tricuspid valve replacement is the preferred option when pulmonary artery banding, performed as a prelude to performing the double-switch operation, is not feasible because of severe heart failure caused by tricuspid regurgitation.

Low-voltage-driven organic thin-film transistors (organic TFTs) with spatially controlled threshold voltages (−1.2 and −0.36 V) were fabricated for the first time. Using the microcontact printing method, tetradecylphosphonic acid (HC14-PA) and pentadecylfluoro-octadecylphosphonic acid (FC18-PA) were transferred to form ultrathin layers in different regions on a substrate. Together with plasma-grown aluminum oxide (AlOx) layer, the stamped layers were shown to have equal insulating ability as the dipped method monolayer. The feasibility of the area-selective stamping method was displayed using locally controlled inverter circuits. The shift of turn-on voltage for those transistors was consistent with the threshold voltage shift of the transistors.

We have successfully achieved a transconductance of 0.76 S/m for organic thin-film transistors with 4 V operation, which is the largest value reported for organic transistors fabricated using printing methods. Using a subfemtoliter inkjet, silver electrodes with a line width of 1 µm and a channel length of 1 µm were printed directly onto an air-stable, high-mobility organic semiconductor that was deposited on a single-molecule self-assembled monolayer-based gate dielectric. On reducing the droplet volume (0.5 fl) ejected from the inkjet nozzle, which reduces sintering temperatures down to 90 °C, the inkjet printing of silver electrodes was accomplished without damage to the organic semiconductor.

The tactile sensors for human support robots which can detect both normal stress and shear stress and have human-friendly surface have been proposed. Micro-cantilevers adequately inclined by Cr deflection control layer were fabricated by the surface micromachining on SOI wafer. The cantilevers were covered with the PDMS elastomer for human-friendly surface. When the stress is added to the surface of elastomer, the deformation of cantilevers along with elastomer is detected as piezoresistive layer in the cantilevers. The piezoresistive response of the cantilever is analyzed by FEM calculation. The response of the fabricated tactile sensor to normal stress and shear stress was measured by output from this resistance. The tactile sensor with PDMS elastomer can detect both normal stress and shear stress. On the other hand, it hardly has sensitivity to shear stress of orthogonal direction to the cantilever. It means that the tactile sensor can distinguish the direction of shear stress. The sensitivity of tactile sensor vary widely with cantilever pattern and relation between direction of cantilever and crystallite orientation of Si. It is suggested that the sensitivity of tactile sensor can be improved by using FEM estimation and selective ion implantation.