We demonstrate anisotropic, vertical deep etching of graphite and densely packed carbon nanotube (CNT) thick layer beyond the micrometer scale, which representing the first step toward nanocarbon bulk micromachining. This micromachining process is compatible with standard lithography and therefore allows the fabrication of graphite and CNT architectures with 1 μm lateral resolution and up to 10 μm scale depth.

Nanostructured carbons have been widely used for fabricating enzyme-modified electrodes due to their large specific surface area. However, because they are random aggregates of particular or tubular nanocarbons, the post-modification of enzymes to their intra-nanospace is generally hard to control. Here, we describe a free-standing film of carbon nanotube forest (CNTF) that can form a hybrid ensemble with enzymes through liquid-induced shrinkage. This provides in-situ regulation of itsintra-nanospace (inter CNT pitch) to the size of enzymes, and eventually serves as a highly active electrode. The CNTF ensemble with fructose dehydrogenase (FDH) showed the oxidation current density of 16 mA cm-2in stirred 200 mM fructose solution. The power density of a biofuel cell using the FDH-CNTF anode and the Laccase-CNTF cathode reached 1.8 mW cm-2(at 0.45 V) in the stirred oxygenic fructose solution, more than 80 % of which could be maintained after continuous operation for 24 h. Application of the free-standing, flexible character of the enzyme-CNTF ensemble electrodes is demonstrated via their use in the patch or wound form.

Optical memory has two recording modes: the photon-mode as a silver halide photograph and the heat-mode as a laser optical disk. Though laser heat-mode recording has the advantage of environmental stability, it has limitations due to thermal diffusion phenomena, which will be discussed in this paper.

Mesoporous materials have attracted considerable interest because of applications in molecular sieve, catalyst, and adsorbent. It will be useful for new functional device if functional molecules can be incorporated into the pore of mesoporous material. However, it is necessary to synthesize new mesoporous materials with controlled large pore size. Recently, new class of mesoporous materials has been prepared using triblock copolymer as a template. In this paper, we reported that hexagonal and cubic structure silicate mesoporous materials can be synthesized through triblock copolymer templating, and their size was controlled by synthesis condition at condensation.

A new concept of generic sign-stability is proposed, and a necessary and sufficient condition for this property is given. This result shows that the condition proposed by Quirk and Ruppert [12] is correct almost everywhere, and helps to clarify the counterexample presented by Jeffries [4].