• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.475-479
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• 2012

We present a novel polymer fabrication process involving direct UV patterning of a hyperbranched polymer, AEO3000. Compared to PDMS, which is the most widely used polymer in bioMEMS devices, the present polymer has advantages with regard to electrode integration and fast fabrication. We designed a four-chip microelectrofluidic bench having three electrical pads and two fluidic I/O ports. We integrated a microfluidic mixer and a cell separator on the bench to characterize the interconnection performance and sample manipulation. Electrical and fluidic characterization of the microfluidic bench was performed. The measured electrical contact resistance was $0.75{\pm}0.44{\Omega}$, which is small enough for electrical applications, and the pressure drop was 8.3 kPa, which was 39.3% of the value in the tubing method. By performing yeast mixing and a separation test in the integrated module on the bench, we successfully showed that the interconnected chips could be used for bio-sample manipulation.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.233-239
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• 2003

For the quantitative analysis of an unknown sample a calibration curve should be obtained, as analytical instruments give relative, rather than absolute measurements. Therefore, researchers should make standard samples with various known concentrations, measure each standard and the unknown sample, and then determine the concentration of the unknown by comparing the measured value to those of the standards. These procedures are tedious and time-consuming. Therefore, we developed a polymer based microfluidic device from polydimethylsiloxane, which integrates serial dilution and capillary electrophoresis functions in a single device. The integrated microchip can provide a one-step analytical tool, and thus replace the complex experimental procedures. Two plastic syringes, one containing a buffer solution and the other a standard solution, were connected to two inlet holes on a microchip, and pushed by a hydrodynamic force. The standard sample is serially diluted to various concentrations through the microfluidic networks. The diluted samples are sequentially introduced through microchannels by electro-osmotic force, and their laser-induced fluorescence signals measured by capillary electrophoresis. We demonstrate the integrated microchip performance by measuring the fluorescence signals of fluorescein at various concentrations. The calibration curve obtained from the electropherograms showed the expected linearity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-52
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• 2017

In droplet-based microfluidic systems, in-droplet preconcentration of a sample is one of the important prerequisites for biochemical or medical analysis. There have been a few studies on preconcentration in a moving droplet, but they are limited to practical applications since 1) their method are time-consuming or 2) they require specific properties such as electric and magnetic properties. In this study, we demonstrated the position control of polystyrene particles of 5 and $10{\mu}m$ in diameter inside a moving water-in-oil droplet using traveling surface acoustic waves. Since the frequencies for effective control of each diameter were found, microparticles with no labels could be utilized. In addition, the proposed method enabled on-demand preconcentration inside a polydimethylsiloxane microchannel. In-droplet preconcentration of microparticles was realized by splitting a mother droplet with manipulated particles at a downstream bifurcation zone. Given these advantages, the proposed system is a promising acoustofluidic lab-on-a-chip platform for preconcentration inside a droplet.

• Fiber Technology and Industry
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.490-508
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• 1998

One of the latest fields of research in the area of output devices is tactual display devices [13,31]. These tactual or haptic devices allow the user to receive haptic feedback output from a variety of sources. This allows the user to actually feel virtual objects and manipulate them by touch. This is an emerging technology and will be instrumental in enhancing the realism of wearable augmented environments for certain applications. Tactual displays have previously been used for scientific visualization in virtual environments by chemists and engineers to improve perception and understanding of force fields and of world models populated with the impenetrable. In addition to tactual displays, the use of wearable audio displays that allow sound to be spatialized are being developed. With wearable computers, designers will soon be able to pair spatialized sound to virtual representations of objects when appropriate to make the wearable computer experience even more realistic to the user. Furthermore, as the number and complexity of wearable computing applications continues to grow, there will be increasing needs for systems that are faster, lighter, and have higher resolution displays. Better networking technology will also need to be developed to allow all users of wearable computers to have high bandwidth connections for real time information gathering and collaboration. In addition to the technology advances that make users need to wear computers in everyday life, there is also the desire to have users want to wear their computers. In order to do this, wearable computing needs to be unobtrusive and socially acceptable. By making wearables smaller and lighter, or actually embedding them in clothing, users can conceal them easily and wear them comfortably. The military is currently working on the development of the Personal Information Carrier (PIC) or digital dog tag. The PIC is a small electronic storage device containing medical information about the wearer. While old military dog tags contained only 5 lines of information, the digital tags may contain volumes of multi-media information including medical history, X-rays, and cardiograms. Using hand held devices in the field, medics would be able to call this information up in real time for better treatment. A fully functional transmittable device is still years off, but this technology once developed in the military, could be adapted tp civilian users and provide ant information, medical or otherwise, in a portable, not obstructive, and fashionable way. Another future device that could increase safety and well being of its users is the nose on-a-chip developed by the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. This tiny digital silicon chip about the size of a dime, is capable of 'smelling' natural gas leaks in stoves, heaters, and other appliances. It can also detect dangerous levels of carbon monoxide. This device can also be configured to notify the fire department when a leak is detected. This nose chip should be commercially available within 2 years, and is inexpensive, requires low power, and is very sensitive. Along with gas detection capabilities, this device may someday also be configured to detect smoke and other harmful gases. By embedding this chip into workers uniforms, name tags, etc., this could be a lifesaving computational accessory. In addition to the future safety technology soon to be available as accessories are devices that are for entertainment and security. The LCI computer group is developing a Smartpen, that electronically verifies a user's signature. With the increase in credit card use and the rise in forgeries, is the need for commercial industries to constantly verify signatures. This Smartpen writes like a normal pen but uses sensors to detect the motion of the pen as the user signs their name to authenticate the signature. This computational accessory should be available in 1999, and would bring increased peace of mind to consumers and vendors alike. In the entertainment domain, Panasonic is creating the first portable hand-held DVD player. This device weight less than 3 pounds and has a screen about 6' across. The color LCD has the same 16:9 aspect ratio of a cinema screen and supports a high resolution of 280,000 pixels and stereo sound. The player can play standard DVD movies and has a hour battery life for mobile use. To summarize, in this paper we presented concepts related to the design and use of wearable computers with extensions to smart spaces. For some time, researchers in telerobotics have used computer graphics to enhance remote scenes. Recent advances in augmented reality displays make it possible to enhance the user's local environment with 'information'. As shown in this paper, there are many application areas for this technology such as medicine, manufacturing, training, and recreation. Wearable computers allow a much closer association of information with the user. By embedding sensors in the wearable to allow it to see what the user sees, hear what the user hears, sense the user's physical state, and analyze what the user is typing, an intelligent agent may be able to analyze what the user is doing and try to predict the resources he will need next or in the near future. Using this information, the agent may download files, reserve communications bandwidth, post reminders, or automatically send updates to colleagues to help facilitate the user's daily interactions. This intelligent wearable computer would be able to act as a personal assistant, who is always around, knows the user's personal preferences and tastes, and tries to streamline interactions with the rest of the world.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.879-894
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• 2016

In micro-fluid systems, fluids are injected into extremely narrow polymer channels in small amounts such as micro-, nano-, or pico-liter scales. These channels themselves are embedded on tiny chips. Various specialized structures in the chips including pumps, valves, and channels allow the chips to accept different types of fluids to be entered the channel and along with flowing through the channels, exert their effects in the framework of different reactions. The chips are generally crystal, silicon, or elastomer in texture. These highly organized structures are equipped with discharging channels through which products as well as wastes of the reactions are secreted out. A particular advantage regarding the use of fluids in micro-scales over macro-scales lies in the fact that these fluids are much better processed in the chips when they applied as micro-scales. When the laboratory is miniaturized as a microchip and solutions are injected on a micro-scale, this combination makes a specialized construction referred to as "lab-on-chip". Taken together, micro-fluids are among the novel technologies which further than declining the costs; enhancing the test repeatability, sensitivity, accuracy, and speed; are emerged as widespread technology in laboratory diagnosis. They can be utilized for monitoring a wide spectrum of biological disorders including different types of cancers. When these microchips are used for cancer monitoring, circulatory tumor cells play a fundamental role.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.30 no.6 s.113
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• pp.333-339
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• 2005

The pesticide is raising public interest in the world, because it causes damage to an environmental pollution and the human health remaining agricultural products and an ecosystem, in spite of the advantages. Particularly, each country restricts the residual pesticide and induces observance about the safety and usage standard so that they can control the amount of pesticide used and defend the safety of agricultural products. The habitual practice for the analysis of the residual pesticide depends on GC (gas chromatography), HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) and GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy), which triturate the fixed quantity of samples, abstract and purify as a suitable organic solvent. These methods have the highly efficient in aspects of sensitivity and accuracy. On the other hand, they need the high cost, time consuming, much effort, expensive equipment and the skillful management. Carbofuran is highly toxic by inhalation and ingestion and moderately toxic by dermal absorption. As with other carbamate compounds, it is metabolized in the liver and eventually excreted in the urine. The half-life of carbofuran on crops is about 4 days when applied to roots, and longer than 4 days if applied to the leaves. This research was conducted to develop immunoassay for detecting carbofuran residue quickly on the basis of surface plasmon resonance and to evaluate the measurement sensitivity. Gold chip used was CM5 spreaded dextran on the surface. An applied antibody to Immunoassay was GST (glutathione-s-transferase). The association and the dissociation time were 176 second and 215 second between GST and carbofuran. The total analysis time using surface plasmon resonance was 13 minutes including regeneration time, on the other hand HPLC and GC/MS was 2 hours usually. The minimum detection limit of a permissible amount for carbofuran in the country is 0.1 ppm. The immunoassay method using surface plasmon resonance was 0.002 ppm.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.23
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• pp.10057-10059
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• 2015

Positron emission tomography (PET) as the functional component of current hybrid imaging (like PET/CT or PET/MRI) seems to dominate the horizon of medical imaging in coming decades. $^{18}$Flourodeoxyglucose ($^{18}FDG$) is the most commonly used probe in oncology and also in cardiology and neurology around the globe. However, the major capital cost and exorbitant running expenditure of low to medium energy cyclotrons (about 20 MeV) and radiochemistry units are the seminal reasons of low number of cyclotrons but mushroom growth pattern of PET scanners. This fact and longer half-life of $^{18}F$ (110 minutes) have paved the path of a centralized model in which $^{18}FDG$ is produced by commercial PET radiopharmacies and the finished product (multi-dose vial with tungsten shielding) is dispensed to customers having only PET scanners. This indeed reduced the cost but has limitations of dependence upon timely arrival of daily shipments as delay caused by any reason results in cancellation or rescheduling of the PET procedures. In recent years, industry and academia have taken a step forward by producing low energy, table top cyclotrons with compact and automated radiochemistry units (Lab-on-Chip). This decentralized strategy enables the users to produce on-demand doses of PET probe themselves at reasonably low cost using an automated and user-friendly technology. This technological development would indeed provide a real impetus to the availability of complete set up of PET based molecular imaging at an affordable cost to the developing countries.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.244-252
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• 2014

Purpose: The development of an efficient in vitro cell culture device to process various cells would represent a major milestone in biological science and engineering. However, the current conventional macro-scale in vitro cell culture platforms are limited in their capacity for detailed analysis and determination of cellular behavior in complex environments. This paper describes a microfluidic-based culture device that allows accurate control of parameters of physical cues such as pressure. Methods: A microfluidic device, as a model microbioreactor, was designed and fabricated to culture Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under various conditions of physical pressure stimulus. This device was compatible with live-cell imaging and allowed quantitative analysis of physical cue-induced behavior in yeast and microalgae. Results: A simple microfluidic-based in vitro cell culture device containing a cell culture channel and an air channel was developed to investigate physical pressure stress-induced behavior in yeasts and microalgae. The shapes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii could be controlled under compressive stress. The lipid production by Chlamydomonas reinhardtii was significantly enhanced by compressive stress in the microfluidic device when compared to cells cultured without compressive stress. Conclusions: This microfluidic-based in vitro cell culture device can be used as a tool for quantitative analysis of cellular behavior under complex physical and chemical conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.214-221
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• 2012

Recently, the biochip which is a prime representation of NT, IT, BT, as an example of convergence technology, has been frequently mentioned. With the recent rapid advance in biotechnology, these compact devices, such as lab-on-a-chip or u-TAS, have been developed, and more research is needed. These compact devices typically use the micro-channel in order to shed or detach and mix a variety of materials. Specially, in micro-fluidic systems, a mixer is necessary to produce a mixture because only laminar flow occurs at a low-Reynolds number. To solve this problem, HVM a micromixer that induces a horizontal and vertical multi-mixing flow motion, is proposed. The mixing performance was analyzed and verified by optimizing the shape through the CFD analysis and evaluating the structural analysis and the soundness with material properties that are obtained through the basic experiment.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.109-114
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• 2023

In this paper, a 2-channel Image-Reject receiver using a 65-nm CMOS process is presented for Ka-band compact radars. The designed receiver consists of Low-Noise Amplifier (LNA), IQ mixer, and Analog Baseband (ABB). ABB includes a complex filter in order to suppress unwanted images, and the variable gain amplifiers (VGAs) in RF block and ABB have gain tuning range from 4.5-56 dB for wide dynamic range. The gain of the receiver is controlled by on-chip SPI controllers. The receiver has noise figure of <15 dB, OP1dB of >4 dBm, image rejection ratio of >30 dB, and channel isolation of >45 dB at the voltage gain of 36 dB, in the Ka-band target frequency. The receiver consumes 420 mA at 1.2 V supply with die area of 4000×1600 ㎛.