• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.106-112
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• 2021

Thermoplastic microfluidic devices are used in BioMEMS for medical and biotechnology applications, such as gene extraction, DNA analysis, and virus detection. In this research, a simple fabrication protocol with a commercially available pneumatic hot press is proposed and demonstrated for polycarbonate microfluidic devices. Microfluidic channels with a width of 200 ㎛ and a height of 10 ㎛ were designed and machined onto a brass plate as a mold insert using a CNC milling machine. The resulting microfluidic channels on the mold insert were assessed and found to have an actual width of 198 ㎛ and a height of 10 ± 0.25 ㎛. The microfluidic channels were replicated on a polycarbonate sheet using the proposed replication technique at 146℃ for 20 minutes under a constant load of 2400 kgf. The devices were then naturally cooled to 100℃ while maintaining the same pressure. It was found that the microchannels were successfully replicated in the polycarbonate, with a width of 198 ㎛ and a height of 10.07 ㎛. The proposed replication technique thus offers the rapid mass production of high-quality microfluidic devices at a low cost with a process that, unlike conventional photolithography systems, does not require expensive equipment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.466-471
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• 2011

Optical coherence tomography(OCT) is an emerging medical diagnostic tool that draws great attention in medical and biological fields. It has a 10-100 times higher spatial resolution than that of the clinical ultrasound but lower imaging depth such as 1-2 mm. In order to image internal organs, OCT needs an endoscopic probe. In this paper, the principle of Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography with high-speed imaging capability was introduced. An OCT endoscope based on MEMS technology was developed. It was attached to the Fourier-domain OCT system to acquire three-dimensional tomographic images of gastrointestinal tract of New Zealand white rabbit. The endoscope had a two-axis scanning mirror that was driven by electrostatic force. The mirror stirred an incident light to sweep two-dimensional plane by scanning. The outer diameter of the endoscope was 6 mm and the mirror diameter was 1.2 mm. A three-dimensional image rendered by 200 two-dimensional tomographs with $200{\times}500$ pixels was displayed within 3.5 seconds. The spatial resolution of the OCT system was 8 ${\mu}m$ in air.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.1196-1200
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• 2004

Micropump is very useful component in micro/nano fluidics and bioMEMS applications. In this study, a bubble-powered micropump was fabricated and tested. The micropump consists of two-parallel micro line heaters, a pair of nozzle-diffuser flow controller and a 1 mm in diameter, 400 ${\mu}m$ in depth pumping chamber. The two-parallel micro line heaters with 20 ${\mu}m-width$ and 200 ${\mu}m-length$ were fabricated to be embedded in the silicon dioxide layer of a wafer which serves as a base plate for the micropump. The pumping chamber, the pair of nozzle-diffuser unit and microchannels including the liquid inlet and outlet port were fabricated by etching through another silicon wafer. A glass wafer (thickness of $525{\pm}15$ ${\mu}m$) having two holes of inlet and outlet ports of liquid serve as upper plate of the pump. Finally the silicon wafer of the base plate, the silicon wafer of pumping chamber and the glass wafer were aligned and bonded (Si-Si bonding and anodic bonding). A sequential photograph of bubble nucleation, growth and collapse was visualized by CCD camera. Clearly liquid flow through the nozzle during the period of bubble growth and slight back flow of liquid at the end of collapsing period can be seen. The mass flow rate was found to be dependent on the duty ratio and the operation frequency. As duty ratio increases, flow rate decreases gradually when the duty ratio exceeds 60%. Also as the operation frequency increases, the flow rate of the micropump decreases slightly.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.207-214
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• 2002

Nano adhesion between SPM (scanning probe microscope) tips and $DDPO_{4}$ (dodecylphosphoric acid ester) and $ODPO_{4}$ (octadecylphosphoric acid ester) SAM (self-assembled monolayer) was experimentally studied. Tests were performed to measure the nano adhesion and friction in both AFM(atomic force microscope) and LFM(lateral force microscope) modes with the applied normal load. $DDPO_{4}$ and $ODPO_{4}$ SAM were formed on TiMe and TiOx surfaces. TiMe and TiOx were coated on the Si wafer by ion sputtering. Adhesion and friction of $DDPO_{4}$ and $ODPO_{4}$ SAM surfaces were compared with those of OTS (octadecyltrichlorosilane) SAM and DLC surfaces. $DDPO_{4}$ and $ODPO_{4}$ SAM converted the TiMe and TiOx surfaces to be hydrophobic. When the surface was hydrophobic, the adhesion and friction forces were found lower than those of bare surfaces. Work of adhesion was also discussed to explain how the surface was converted into hydrophobic. Results also showed that tribological characteristics of $DDPO_{4}$ and $ODPO_{4}$ had good properties in the adhesion, friction, wetting angle and work of adhesion. $DDPO_{4}$ and $ODPO_{4}$ SAM could be one of the candidates for the bio-MEMS elements.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2008.07a
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• pp.1246-1247
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• 2008

With recent advanced in portable electric devices, wireless sensor, MEMS and bio-Mechanics device, the new typed power supply, not conventional battery but self-powered energy source is needed. Particularly, the system that harvests from their environments are interests for use in self powered devices. For very low powered devices, environmental energy may be enough to use power source. Therefore, in other to made piezoelectric energy harvesting device, PMN-PZT thick film was formed by the screen printing method on the Ag/Pd coated alumina substrate. The layer was 8 layers and slurry where a-terpineol, ethycellulose, ferro B-75001 as Vehicle, PMN-PZT powder used are fabricated by ball mill. The output power quality was be also investigated by changing the load resistance, weight and frequency. The made piezoelectric energy harvesting device was resulted from the conditions of 33$k{\Omega}$, 0.25g, 197Hz respectively. The thick film was prepared at the condition of 2.75Vrms, and its power was 230${\mu} W$ and its thickness was 56${mu}m$. The piezoelectric energy harvesting device output voltage was increased, when the load weight, load resistance was increasing and resonance frequency was diminishing. The other side, resonance frequency was diminished, when the weight was increasing. And output power was continuously it changed by load resistance, output voltage, weight and resonance frequency.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2006

Biodevices composed of biomolecular layer by mimicking the natural functions of cells and the interaction mechanisms of the constituted biomolecules have been developed in various industrial fields such as medical diagnosis, drug screening, electronic device, bioprocess, and environmental pollution detection. To construct biodevices such as bioelectronic devices (biomolecular diode, bio-information storage device and bioelectroluminescence device), protein chip, DNA chip, and cell chip, biomolecules including DNA, protein, and cells have been used. Fusion technology consisting of immobilization technology of biomolecules, micro/nano-scale patterning, detection technology, and MEMs technology has been used to construct the biodevices. Recently, nanotechnology has been applied to construct nano-biodevices. In this paper, the current technology status of biodevice including its fabrication technology and applications is described and the future development direction is proposed.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.149-158
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• 2005

This paper describes design, fabrication, and application of the silicon based temperature controllable micro reactor. In order to achieve fast temperature variation and low energy consumption, reaction chamber of the micro reactor was thermally isolated by etching the highly conductive silicon around the reaction chamber. Compared with the model not having thermally isolated structure, the thermally isolated micro reactor showed enhanced thermal performances such as fast temperature variation and low energy consumption. The performance enhancements of the micro reactor due to etched holes were verified by thermal experiment and numerical analysis. Regarding to 42 percents reduction of the thermal mass achieved by the etched holes, approximately 4 times faster thermal variation and 5 times smaller energy consumption were acquired. The total size of the fabricated micro reactor was $37{\times}30{\times}1mm^{3}$. Microchannel and reaction chamber were formed on the silicon substrate. The openings of channel and chamber were covered by the glass substrate. The Pt electrodes for heater and sensor are fabricated on the backside of silicon substrate below the reaction chamber. The dimension of channel cross section was $200{\times}100{\mu}m^{2}$. The volume of reaction chamber was $4{\mu}l$. The temperature of the micro reactor was controlled and measured simultaneously with NI DAQ PCI-MIO-16E-l board and LabVIEW program. Finally, the fabricated micro reactor and the temperature control system were applied to the thermal denaturation and the trypsin digestion of protein. BSA(bovine serum albumin) was chosen for the test sample. It was successfully shown that BSA was successfully denatured at $75^{\circ}C$ for 1 min and digested by trypsin at $37^{\circ}C$ for 10 min.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.11
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• pp.1721-1725
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• 2010

This paper reports the fabrication of geometry-controlled carbon microneedles by a backside exposure method and pyrolysis. The SU-8 microneedles are a polymer precursor in a carbonization process, which geometries such as base diameter, spacing, and aspect ratio can be controlled in a photolithography step. Using this fabrication method, highly reproducible carbon microneedles, which have high aspect ratios of more than 10 and very sharp nanotips, can be realized. The quartz surface with carbon microneedles becomes very hydrophilic and its wettability is adjusted by carrying out the silane treatment. In the carbon microneedle array ($3\;{\mu}m{\times}3\;{\mu}m$), the contact angle is extremly enhanced (${\sim}180^{\circ}$); this will be advantageous in developing low-drag microfluidics and labs-on-a-chip as well as in other bio-applications.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.329-334
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• 2004

The electronic nose (E-nose) recently finds its applications in medical diagnosis, specifically on detection of diabetes, pulmonary or gastrointestinal problem, or infections by examining odors in the breath or tissues with its odor characterizing ability. The odor recognition performance of E-nose can be improved by manipulating the sensor array responses of vapors in time-profile forms. The different chemical interactions between the sensor materials and the volatile organic compounds (VOC's) leave unique marks in the signal profiles giving more information than collection of the conventional piecemal features, i.e., maximum sensitivity, signal slopes, rising time. In this study, to use them in vapor recognition task conveniently, a novel time-profile method was proposed, which is adopted from digital image pattern matching. The degrees of matching between 8 different vapors were evaluated by using the proposed method. The test vapors are measured by the silicon-based gas sensor array with 16 CB-polymer composites installed in membrane structure. The results by the proposed method showed clear discrimination of vapor species than by the conventional method.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.431-438
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• 2004

Medical ultrasonic imaging is a useful imaging facility known to be most safe and easy. It enables physicians to observe the inside structures of the bodies, blood flow, and motions of internal organs. Some physical properties of biologic tissues can also be estimated from backscattered sounds. However, the ultrasonic pulses interrogating the living organisms leave their footprints in the returning signals during imaging. Some significant details are buried in the footprints and their overlaps from adjacent particles. These distortions also decrease the quality of the images. Many research efforts have been made to enhance the image quality and to recover the acoustic information in various ways. In this study, a new interrogation method based on the wavelet and subband filter bank is proposed. It adopts the subband wavelet filters satisfying the perfect-reconstruction (PR) conditions as the interrogating pulses to restore the details useful in tissue characterization and to enhance the image quality. The proposed method was applied to two types of simulations of ultrasonic imaging. The results showed its ability to restore the detailsin the simulated interrogation of biologic tissues, and verified the improved image quality in the simulated imaging of general ultrasonic phantom compared with the conventional method.