• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.86-86
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• 2010

Micro- and nanoscale texturing and control of surface energy have been considered for superhydrophobicity on polymer and silicon. However these surfaces have been reported to be difficult to meet the robustness and transparency requirements for further applications, from self cleaning windows to biochip technology. Here we provided a novel method to fabricate a nearly superhydrophobic soda-lime glass using two-step method. The first step involved wet etching process to fabricate micro-sale patterns on soda-lime glass. The second step involved application of $SiO_x$-incorporated DLC to generate high intrinsic contact angle on the surface using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. To investigate the effect of surface roughness, we used both positive and negative micro-scale patterns on soda-limeglass, which is relatively hard for surface texturing in comparison to quartz or Pyrex glasses due to the presence of impurities, but cheaper. For all samples we tested the static wetting angle and transparency before and after 100 cycles of wear test using woolen steel. The surface morphology is observed using optical and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results shows that negative patterns had a greater wear resistance while the hydrophobicity was best achieved using positive patterns having static contact angle up to 140 deg. with about 80% transparency. The overall experiment shows that positive patterns at etching time of 1 min shows the optimum transparency and hydrophobicity. The optimization of micro-scale pattern to achieve a robust, transparent, superhydrophobic soda-lime glass will be further investigated in the future works.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.365-365
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• 2010

Similar to the superhydrophobic surfaces of lotus leaf, water strider leg is attributed to hierarchical structure of micro pillar and nano-hair coated with low surface energy materials, by which water strider can run and even jump on the water surface. In order to mimick its leg, many effort, especially, on the fabrication of nanohairs has been made using several methods such as a capillarity-driven molding and lithography using poly(urethane acrylate)(PUA). However most of those effort was not so effective to create the similar structure due to its difficulty in the fabrication of nanoscale hairy structures with hydrophobic surface. In this study, we have selected a low surface energy polymeric material of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, or Teflon) assisted with surface modification of CF4 plasma treatment followed by hydrophobic surface coating with pre-cursor of hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) using a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD). It was found that the plasma energy and duration of CF4 treatment on PTFE polymer could control the aspect ratio of nano-hairy structure, which varying with high aspect ratio of more than 20 to 1, or height of over 1000nm but width of 50nm in average. The water contact angle on pristine PTFE surface was measured as approximately $115^{\circ}$. With nanostructures by CF4 plasma treatment and hydrophobic coating of HMDSO film, we made a superhydrophobic nano-hair structure with the wetting angle of over $160^{\circ}C$. This novel fabrication method of nanohairy structures has been applied not only on 2-D flat substrate but also on 3-D substrates like wire and cylinder, which is similarly mimicked the water strider's leg.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1838-1843
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• 2014

Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) fabrication process is regarded as the main alternative to existing expensive photo-lithography in areas such as micro- and nano-electronics including optical components and sensors, as well as the solar cell and display device industries. Functional patterns, including anti-reflective moth-eye pattern, photonic crystal pattern, fabricated by NIL can improve the overall efficiency of such devices. To successfully imprint a nano-sized pattern, the process conditions such as temperature, pressure, and time should be appropriately selected. In this paper, a cavity-filling process of the moth-eye pattern during the thermal-NIL within the temperature range, where the polymer resist shows the viscoelastic behaviors with consideration of stress relaxation effect of the polymer, were investigated with three-dimensional finite element analysis. The effects of initial thickness of polymer resist and imprinting pressure on cavity-filling process has been discussed. From the analysis results it was found that the cavity filling can be completed within 100 s, under the pressure of more than 4 MPa.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.302-307
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• 2007

In this paper, a flap valve micropump with an ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuator was designed, fabricated, and experimentally characterized. A multilayered IPMC based on Nafion/layered silicate and Nafion/silica nanocomposites was fabricated for the actuation section of the micropump. The IPMC diaphragm, a key element of the mircopump, was designed so that the IPMC actuator was supported by a flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) structure at its perimeter. This design feature enabled a significantly high displacement of the IPMC diaphragm. The overall size of the micropump is $20{\times}20{\times}5$ ${mm}^3$. Water flow rates of up to 760 ${\mu}l$/min and a maximum backpressure of 1.5 kPa were recorded. A significant advantage of the proposed micropump is its low driven voltage from only 1-3 V. In addition, a simple and effective design, and an ease of manufacturing are other advantages of the present micropump.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.98-102
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• 2014

Nowadays, silk fibroin receives a lot of attention as novel natural biomaterials due to its excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability. Electrohydrodynamic spraying (EHDS) is one of the method for the preparation of micro or nanoparticles by applying high voltage to the polymer solution. In this research, we fabricated silk fibroin porous microparticles by electrohydrodynamic spraying. Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) was added to the fibroin solution to give pores to silk fibroin microparticles. By the addition of PEG, the microparticle size was decreased despite of the decrease in conductivity and the increase of viscosity of the spraying solution. It seems that the immiscibility of silk fibroin and PEG affected much more to the microparticle size than the conductivity and viscosity. Immersing the as-sprayed microparticles into the water removed the phase-separated PEG, and finally, porous silk fibroin microparticles were prepared. The porous silk fibroin microparticles are expected to be applied as drug carriers in drug delivery or cell carriers in tissue engineering.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.423.1-423.1
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• 2016

Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) has drawn much attention due to its many advantages. PVDF shows high mechanical strength and flexibility, thermal stability, and good piezoelectricity enabling its application to various fields such as sensors, actuators, and energy transducers. Further studies have been conducted on PVDF in the form of thin films. The thin films exhibit different ionic conductivity according to the number of pores within the film, letting these films to be applied as electrolytes or separators of batteries. Porous PVDF membranes are also easily processed, usually made by using electrospinning. However, a large portion of researches were conducted using PVDF membranes produced by far field electrospinning, which is not a well-controlled experimental method. In this paper, we use near field electrospinning (NFES) process for more controlled, small-scaled, mesh type PVDF structures of nano to micro fibers fabricated by controlling process parameters and investigate the properties of such membranous structures. These membranes vary according to geometrical shape, pore density, and fiber thickness. We then measured the mechanical strength and piezoelectric characteristic of the structures. With various geometries in the fiber structures and various scales in the fibers, these types of structures can potentially lead to broader applications for stretchable electronics and dielectric electro active polymers.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.383-387
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• 2014

Electrically conductive polypyrrole-polyvinylpyrrolidone (PPy-PVP) nanofiber mats with a core-shell structure have been successfully fabricated by a two-step process: the formation of FeCl3-containing PVP nanofiber mat by electrospinning, and the vapor-phase polymerization (VPP) of pyrrole monomer on the mat in a sealed chamber at room temperature. Surface morphology and chemical composition of the PPy-PVP mat were characterized by SEM, EDX and FTIR analyses. The as-prepared nonwoven mat was composed of PPy-PVP nanofibers with an average diameter of 300 nm. The sheet conductivity of the nanofiber mat was measured to be approximately 0.01 S/cm by a four-point probe. We have also investigated gas-sensing properties of PPy-PVP nanofiber mat upon exposure to methanol vapor. The PPy-PVP nanofiber sensors were observed to have excellent methanol-sensing performance. The nanofiber-based core-shell nanostructure could give an opportunity to fabricate a highly sensitive and fast response sensor due to its high surfaceto-volume ratio.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.136-142
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• 2007

Precise fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) self-standing microstructures on thin glass plates via two-photon induced polymerization (TPP) has been an important issue for innovative 3D nanodevices and microdevices. However, there are still issues remaining to be solved, such as building 3D microstructures on opaque materials via TPP and being able to implant them as functional parts onto practical systems. To settle these issues simply and effectively, we propose a contact print lithography (CPL) method using an ultraviolet (UV)-curable polymer layer. We report some of the possibilities and potential of CPL by presenting our results for transplanting 3D microstructures onto large-area substrates and also our examination of some of the effects of the process parameters on successful transplantation.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1613-1616
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• 2007

A microgripper using thermal actuator and SU-8 polymer was designed and fabricated to manipulate cells and microparts. A chip size of a microgripper was 3 mm ${\times}$ 5 mm. The thermally actuated microgripper consisted of two couples of hot and cold arm actuators. The high thermal expansion coefficient, 52 $ppm/^{\circ}C$, of SU-8 compared to silicon and metals, allows the actuation of the microgripper. Thickness and width of SU-8 as an end-effector were 26 ${\mu}m$ and 80 ${\mu}m$, respectively. Initial gap between left jaw and right jaw was 120 ${\mu}m$. The ANSYS program as FEM tool was introduced to analyze the thermal distribution and displacement induced by thermal actuators. $XeF_2$ gas was used for isotropic silicon dry etching process to release SU-8 end-effector. Mechanical displacements of the fabricated microgripper were measured by optical microscopy in the range of input voltage from 0 V to 2.5 V. The maximum displacement between two jaws of a microgripper Type OG 1_1 was 22.4 ${\mu}m$ at 2.5 V.

• Journal of Information Display
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.17-23
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• 2003

A thermoset type anisotropic conductive adhesive film (ACAF) comprising epoxy resin and natural butyl rubber (NBR) as the binder, micro-encapsulated imidazole as the curing agent, and Ni/Au coated polymer bead as a conductive particle has been studied. These films have been prepared to respond to requirements such as improved contact resistance, current status less of than 60 ${\mu}m$ and reliability. These films can also be used for connection between the ITO glass for LCD panel and the flexible circuit board. The curing conditions for the connection were 40, 20 and 15 seconds at 150, 170 and 190 $^{\circ}C$, respectively. The initial contact resistance and adhesion strength were 0.5 ${\Omega}/square$ and 0.4 kg/cm under the condition of 30 kgf/$^{cm}^2}$, respectively. After completing one thousand thermal shock cycling tests between -15 $^{\circ}C$ and 100 $^{\circ}C$, the contact resistance was maintained below 0.7 ${\Omega}/square$. Durability against high temperature (80$^{\circ}C$) and high humidity (85 % RH) was also tested to confirm long-term stability (1000 hrs) of the conduction.