• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.315-323
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• 2018

CanSat has being attracted considerable attentions for the use as training purposes owing to its advantage that can implement overall system functions of typical commercial satellites within a small package like a beverage can. So-called P.P.T CanSat (Power Plant Trio Can Satellite), proposed in this study, is the name of a CanSat project which have participated in 2015 domestic CanSat competition. Its main objective is to self-power on a LED and a MEMS sensor module by using electrical energy harvested from solar, wind and piezo energy harvesting systems. This study describes the system design results, payload level function tests, flight test results and lessons learned from the flight tests.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.181-188
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• 2011

A small UAVs(Unmaned Aerial Vehicles) have limited by the payload capacity which requires miniaturization of a navigation system. In this paper, the performance of the lightweight and small sized AHRS(Attitude Heading Reference System), which is self-developed, is evaluated at low acceleration environment. The designed AHRS adopts the commercial low-cost MEMS sensors. A quaternion-based attitude calculation method, which eliminates singularity with relatively simple algebra, is used. In an attitude correction algorithm, the Kalman filter is used with accelerometers and magnetometers combined. The fabricated AHRS is also evaluated with reference to a COTS(Commercial Off-The-Shelf) AHRS which reports a number of successful applications to a small UAVs. The test results show that the measurements from the fabricated AHRS provide proper attitude output data with acceptable amount of differences(horizontal axis 0.5$^{\circ}$, vertical axis 1.5$^{\circ}$) in test environment.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.418-424
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• 2008

The PZT based piezoelectric thick films prepared by screen printing method have been mainly used as a functional material for MEMS applications due to their compatibility of MEMS process. However the screen printed thick films generally reveal poor electrical and mechanical properties because of their porous microstructure. To improve microstructure we mixed attrition milled powder with ball milled powder of 0.01Pb$(Mg_{1/2}W_{1/2})O_3$-0.41Pb$(Ni_{1/3}Nb_{2/3})O_3$-$0.35PbTiO_3$-$0.23PbZrO_3$+0.1 wt% ${Y_2}{O_3}$+1.5 wt% ZnO composition. By mixing 25 % of attrition milled powder and 75 % of ball milled powder, the broadest particle size distribution was obtained, leading to a dense thick film with crack-free microstructure and improved dielectric properties. The X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the film was in wellcrystallized perovskite phase. The remanent polarization was increased from $13.7{\mu}C/cm^2$ to $23.3{\mu}C/cm^2$ at the addition of 25 % attrition milled powder.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.89-94
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• 2013

In this paper, we developed a beam of MEMS probe card using a BeCu sheet. Silicon wafer thickness of $400{\mu}m$ was fabricated by using deep reactive ion etching (RIE) process. After forming through silicon via (TSV), the silicon wafer was bonded with BeCu sheet by soldering process. We made BeCu beam stress-free owing to removing internal stress by using joule heating. BeCu beam was fused by using joule heating caused by high current. The fabricated BeCu beam measured length of 1.75 mm and width of 0.44 mm, and thickness of $15{\mu}m$. We measured fusing current as a function of the cutting planes. Maximum current was 5.98 A at cutting plane of $150{\mu}m^2$. The proposed low-cost and simple fabrication process is applicable for producing MEMS probe beam.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.632-639
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• 2014

Mechanical stress and the vacuum level are the two main factors dominating the quality factor of a resonator operated in the vacuum range 1 mTorr to 10 Torr. This means that if the quality factor of a resonator is very insensitive to the mechanical stress in the vacuum range, it is sensitive to mainly the ambient vacuum level. In this paper, a wafer-level packaged MEMS resonator with a highly vacuum-sensitive quality factor is presented. The proposed device is characterized by a package with out-of-plane symmetry and a suspending structure with only a single anchor. Out-of-plane symmetry helps prevent deformation of the packaged device due to thermal mismatch, and a single-clamped structure facilitates constraint-free displacement. As a result, the proposed device is very insensitive to mechanical stress and is sensitive to mainly the ambient vacuum level. The average quality factors of the devices packaged under pressures of 50, 100, and 200 mTorr were 4987, 3415, and 2127, respectively. The results demonstrated the high controllability of the quality factor by vacuum adjustment. The mechanical robustness of the quality factor was confirmed by comparing the quality factors before and after high-temperature storage. Furthermore, through more than 50 days of monitoring, the stability of the quality factor was also certified.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-67
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• 2011

Human state in human-machine systems highly affects the overall system performance, and should be detected and monitored. Physiological cues are essential indicators of human state and useful for the purpose of monitoring. The study presented in this paper was focused on developing a bio-inspired sensing system, i.e., Nano-Skin, to non-intrusively measure physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state. The paper is presented in three parts. The first part is to analyze the relationship between human state and physiological cues, and to introduce the conceptual design of Nano-Skin. Generally, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, operating force, blood alcohol concentration, sweat rate, and electromyography are closely related with human state. They can be measured through human-machine contact surfaces using Nano-Skin. The second part is to discuss the technologies for skin temperature measurement. The third part is to introduce the design and manufacture of the Nano-Skin for skin temperature measurement. Experiments were performed to verify the performance of the Nano-Skin in temperature measurement. Overall, the study concludes that Nano-Skin is a promising product for measuring physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.300-308
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• 2010

In order to accelerate the evolution of faster, better, cheaper spacecraft, it is evident that greatly enhanced general-purpose attitude determination methods are needed Currently, star tracker sensors based on charge coupled devices (CCD) or active pixel sensors(APS) enable one to obtain the best spacecraft attitude estimation among the existing sensors for attitude determination. In this paper, basic principles of star tracker technology are explained including major issues arising in design and development of star tracker. Also, an historical overview and worldwide survey associated with various star trackers from star scanner through microelectromechanical system(MEMS)-based star tracker is offered.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.75-80
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• 2008

In this work, we optimized a microbolometer for application of a $CO_2$ detector by using MEMS technology. We fabricated a stable thermal isolation structure by varying the lengths of supporting legs which affect bolometer performance. We could fabricate more stable thermal isolation structure for the microbolometer through the results of ANSYS simulations, and minimize the fabrication processes by using bulk micromachining to use a $CO_2$ detector. The microbolometer shows a detectivity of $2.5{\times}109$ cmHz$^{1/2}$/W at a chopper frequency of 8 Hz and a bias current of $6.25\;{\mu}A$ with a vacuum package of about $3.0{\times}10.3$ torr. Therefore, we put to conclusion that the microbolometer optimized in this experiment could be useful for the application of a $CO_2$ detector.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.269-274
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• 2018

High-sensitivity signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) microphones are essentially required for a broad range of automatic speech recognition applications. Piezoelectric microphones have several advantages compared to conventional capacitor microphones including high stiffness and high SNR. In this study, we designed a new piezoelectric membrane structure by using the finite elements method (FEM) and an optimization technique to improve the sensitivity of the transducer, which has a high-quality AlN piezoelectric thin film. The simulation demonstrated that the sensitivity critically depends on the inner radius of the top electrode, the outer radius of the membrane, and the thickness of the piezoelectric film in the microphone. The optimized piezoelectric transducer structure showed a much higher sensitivity than that of the conventional piezoelectric transducer structure. This study provides a visible path to realize micro-scale high-sensitivity piezoelectric microphones that have a simple manufacturing process, wide range of frequency and low DC bias voltage.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.366-369
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• 2017

This work presents a detailed study of several parameters on the spray coating method for fabricating a flexible cantilever. Conventionally, spin coating method have been widely used in the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabrication process. However, the major drawback of this method is the difficulties in protecting various topography with photoresist film, particularly when the device is manufactured in high aspect ratio. It is also a challenging process to form a small pattern in the etched area. On the other hand, the commercial spray coating systems are not advantageous from an economic perspective and the technique is also providing less efficient. In order to solve these issues, we have developed a manual spray coating system which can be efficiently used by combining the accessories available in the laboratory. The developed spray coating system consists of a spin-coater, motorized stage, a spray gun with the capable of controlling centrifugal force, injection amount, injection angle, and spray range. The major advantage of the proposed spray coating system is its reasonable fabrication cost. Secondly, the system can be easily disassembled after finishing the coating experiment. Owing to the mentioned advantages, we sincerely believe that the proposed spray coating system can be effectively used in many related applications.