• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.26 no.10
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• pp.1982-1988
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• 2002

Micro-injection molding and microfluidic devices with the help of MEMS technologies including the LIGA process are expected to play important roles in micro-system industries, in particular the bio-application industry, in the near future. Understanding fluid flows in micro-channels is important since micro-channels are typical geometry in various microfluidic devices and mold inserts for micro-injection molding. In the present study, Part 1, an experimental investigation has been carried out to understand the detailed flow phenomena in micro-channel filling process. Three sets of micro-channels of different thickness (40um,30um and 2011m) were fabricated using SU-8 on silicon wafer substrate. And a flow visualization system was developed to observe the filling flow into the micro-channels. Experimental flow observations are extensively made to find the effects of pressure, inertia force, viscous force and surface tension. A dimensional analysis for experimental results was carried out and several relationships A dimensionless parameters are obtained.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.1516-1521
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• 2004

Mixing in Y-channel micro mixer is analyzed through computational fluid dynamics. In the case of passive mixing, we investigate the effect of geometric parameters on the mixing efficiency, such as shape of throttling geometry and angle between two inlets. Mixing performance improves as two fluids join not just horizontally but both vertically and horizontally, and it also improves when channel follows throttling shapes. A numerical results substantiate the highly efficient mixing performance. It is highly beneficial to fabrication process since the proposed throttling geometry is simple, but allows high mixing ratio.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.07a
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• pp.1521_1522
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• 2009

Chemotaxis is the directed movement of cells in gradients of signaling molecules, an essential biological process that underlies morhpogenesis during development, and the recruitment of immune cells to sites of infection. Especially, bacterial chemotaxis has utilized as an important prelude to study metabolism, prey-predator relationship, symbiosis, other ecological interactions in microbial communities. Recently, novel analytical formats integrated with microfluidics were introduced to investigate the chemotaxis of the cells with the precise control of chemical gradient and small volume of cells. In this study, we present a method to detect bacterial chemotaxis by direct fluidic contacting. The developed fluidic-handling method is driven by capillary force, hydrophobic barrier and a cohesion force between fluids. We have investigated the chemotactic response of E Coli. and Pseudomonas aeruginosa to three kinds of chemoeffectors such as HEPES buffer, peptone and chloroform.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.279-284
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• 2006

This paper describes the fabrication methods of a carbon nanotube (CNT) filter and a microdialysis chip. A CNT filter can help perform dialysis on a microfluidic chip. In this study, a membrane type of a CNT filter is fabricated and located in a microfluidic chip. The filter plays a role of a dialysis membrane in a microfluidic chip. In the fabrication process of a CNT filter, individual CNTs are entangled each other by amide bonding that is catalyzed by 1-Ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). The chemically treated CNTs are shaped to form a CNT filter using a PDMS film-mold and vacuum filtering. Then, the CNT filter is sandwiched between PDMS substrates, and they are bonded together using a thin layer of PDMS prepolymer as adhesive. The PDMS substrates are fabricated to have a microchannel by standard photo-lithography technique.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.311-317
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• 2009

Due to extremely small device size and velocity scale, mixing in microchannel take place very slowly by way of molecular diffusion transport. Mixing enhancement becomes a central issue in microfluidics for biomedical and chemical applications. In this work, The optimization results and validation through experiment and fabrication. In this efficient micromixer design, it is essential to evaluate mixing efficiency with good precision. Mixing efficiency for Y-channel micromixer is measured by fluorescence intensity using LIF(Laser Induced Fluorescence) Confocal Microscope. The Y-channel micromixers are fabricated with polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS). Nile Blue A is injected into the micromixer as a fluorescence dye for measuring of fluorescence intensity by He/Ne laser. Throughout the experiments and computer simulation, accurate mixing efficiency evaluation process for a PDMS Y-channel micromixer is established.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1004-1009
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• 2003

Electroosmotic flow induced by an applied electrostatic potential field in microchannel is analyzed in this study. The electroosmotic flow is an alternative to pressure driven flow in microchannels, but the usage has been limited to the simple cases. In this study, We analyze electroosmotic flow driven by inhomogeneous surface charge on the channel wall. The surface charge varies along a direction perpendicular to the electric field in order to generate the electroosmotic flow. A numerical results substantiate the highly efficient mixing performance. It is highly the beneficial to fabrication process since only straight microchannel rather than complex geometry is enough to yield efficient mixing.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06c
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• pp.47-52
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• 2001

Micro-injection molding and microfluidic devices with the help of MEMS technologies including the LIGA process are expected to play important roles in. micro-system industries, in particular the bioapplication industry, in the near future. Understanding fluid flows in micro-channels is important since micro-channels are typical geometry in various microfluidic devices and mold inserts for micro-injection molding. In the present study, both experimental and numerical studies have been carried out to understand the detailed flow phenomena in micro-channel filling process. Three sets of micro-channels of different thickness were fabricated and a flow visualization system was also developed to observe the filling flow into the micro-channels. Experimental flow observations were extensively made to find the effects of channel width and thickness, and effects of surface tension and volume flow rate and so on. And a numerical analysis system has been developed to simulate the filling flow into micro-channels with the surface tension effect taken into account. Discussed are the flow visualization experimental observations along with the predictability of the numerical analysis system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.644-654
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• 2003

An analytical solution for a vertically stratified viscous flow in a microchannel with a rectangular cross-section is constructed, assuming fully developed laminar flow where the interfaces between the fluid layers are flat. Although the solution is for n-layer flow, restricted results to symmetrical three-layer flow are presented to investigate the effects of the viscosity and thickness ratios of the fluid layers and the aspect ratio of the microchannel on the flow field. Relations between the flow rate and thickness ratios of the fluid layers with varying viscosity distributions are found, considering the cross -sectional velocity profiles which vary noticeably with the three parameters and differ significantly from the velocity profiles of the flow between infinite parallel plates. Interfacial instability induced by the viscosity stratification in the microchannel is discussed referring to previous studies on the instability analysis for plane multilayer flow. Exact solution derived in the present study can be used for examining a diffusion process and three -dimensional stability analysis. More works are needed to formulate the equations including the effects of interfacial' tension between immiscible liquids and surface wettability which are important in microscale transport phenomena.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.577-585
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• 2015

We fabricated multi-scale such as macro-, micro-, and multi-scale wrinkles by using repetitive volume dividing (RVD) method and thermal curing process. Also wrinkle surface was modified with coating of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM). We measured the contact angle of each wrinkled surface, and observed the behavior of droplets on sloping surface. Through experimental study, we found out that the contact angle was much higher in case of multi-scale and SAM coated wrinkles. And micro-scale wrinkle showed a high contact angle comparing with that of macro-scale wrinkle. Dynamic behaviors of a water droplet like sliding velocity on diverse wrinkled surfaces were dependent on their static contact angles. These results showed that hydro-dynamic characteristics were changed depending on the wrinkle structure and the material forming the wrinkle. These dynamic characteristics can be utilized in bio-chip, microfluidics, and many others in order to control easily chemical reactivity.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.45 no.11
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• pp.739-743
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• 2008

Microfluidic device can be applied in a wide range of chemical and biological technology. In this paper, ceramic-based T-type passive mixers for microfluidic applications were fabricated by LTCC process combined with thick film photolithography. The base ceramic material in thick film was amorphous cordierite $((Mg,Ca)_2Al_4Si_5O_{18})$ and photoimageable polymers were added to give a photosensitivity. Two types of passive mixer, which showed the channel width of 1.0 mm and $200{\mu}m$, respectively, were designed considering mixing efficiency in the channel and their microfluidic properties were discussed in detail.