• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.1133-1137
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• 2011

A novel technique for the fabrication of a glass micropipette-based thermal sensor was developed utilizing inexpensive thermocouple materials. Thermal fluctuation with a resolution of ${\pm}0.002$ K was measured using the fabricated thermal probe. The sensors comprise unleaded low-melting point solder alloy (Sn) as a core metal inside a borosilicate glass pipette coated with a thin film of Ni, creating a thermocouple junction at the tip. The sensor was calibrated using a thermally insulated calibration chamber, the temperature of which can be controlled with a precision of ${\pm}0.1$ K and the thermoelectric power (Seebeck coefficient) of the sensor was recorded from 8.46 to $8.86{\mu}V$/K. The sensor we have produced is both cost-effective and reliable for thermal conductivity measurements of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and biological temperature sensing at the micron level.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.643-648
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• 2000

The AFM is an imaging tool or a profiler with unprecedented 3-D resolution for various surface types. The AFM technology, however, leaves a lot of room for improvement due to its delicate and fragile probing mechanism. The distance between probe tip and sample surface must be maintained in below the nano meter level in order to measure the sample surface in Angstrom resolution. In this paper, the mode analysis of AFM system, modification based on the mode analysis are performed and finally the sample surface is measured by the home-built AFM.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.13-13
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• 2010

Switching an elementary excitation by injecting a single carrier would offer the exciting opportunity for the ultra-high data storage technologies. However, there has been no methodology available to investigate the interaction of low energy discrete carriers with nano-structures. In order to map out the spatial dependency of such single carrier level interactions, we developed a pulse-and-probe algorithm, combining with low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. The new tool, which we call single carrier spectroscopy, allows us to track the interaction with the target macrostructure with tunneling carriers on a single carrier basis. Using this tool, we demonstrate that it is possible not only to locally write and erase individual bi-solitons, reliably and reversibly, but also to track of creation yields of single and multiple bi-solitons. Bi-solitons are pairs of solitons that are elementary out-of-phase excitations on anti-ferromagnetically ordered pseudo-spin system of Si dimers on Si(001)-c(42) surfaces. We found that at low energy tunneling the single bisoliton creation mechanism is not correlated with the number of carriers tunneling, but with the production of a potential hole under the tip. An electric field at the surface determines the density of the local charge density under the tip, and band-bending. However a rapid, dynamic change of a field produces a potential hole that can be filled by energetic carriers, and the amount of energy released during filling process is responsible for the creation of bi-solitons. Our model based on the field-induced local hole gives excellent explanation for bi-soliton yield behaviors. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy data supports the existence of such a potential hole. The mechanism also explains the site-dependency of bi-soliton yields, which is highest at the trough, not on the dimer rows. Our study demonstrates that we can manipulate not just single atoms and molecules, but also single pseudo-spin excitations as well.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.81-85
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• 2009

Interests in micro/nano-particles have been greatly increasing due to their wide applications in various fields such as environmental and medical sciences as well as engineering. In order to obtain a fundamental understanding of the tribological characteristics at particle-surface contact interface, frictional behaviors according to load/pressure and materials were obtained by using atomic force microscope(AFM) cantilevers with different stiffnesses and tips. Lateral contact stiffnesses were observed in various tip-surface contact situations. Experimental results show that stick-slip friction behavior occurs even when the colloidal probes with a particle of a few micrometers in diameter, which have a relatively large contact area and lack a well-shaped apex, were used. This indicates that atomic stick-slip friction may be a more common phenomenon than it is currently thought to be. Also, experimental results were investigated by considering the competition between the stiffness of the interatomic potential across the interface and the elastic stiffnesses of the contacting materials and the force sensor itself.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.11 s.176
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• pp.64-71
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• 2005

In order to measure surface roughness profile, stylus type equipments are commonly used, but the stylus keeps contact with surface and damages specimens by its tip pressure. Therefore, optics based measurement systems are developed, and light phase interferometer, which is based on light interference phenomenon, is the most noticeable research. However, light interference based measurements require translation mechanisms of nano-meter order in order to generate phase differences or multiple focusing, thus the systems cannot satisfy the industrial need of on-the-machine and in-process measurement to achieve factory automation and productive enhancement. In this research, we focused light reflectance phenomenon rather than the light interference, because reflectance based method do not need translation mechanisms. However, the method cannot direct]y measure surface roughness profile, because reflected light consists of several components and thus it cannot supply surface height information with its original form. In order to overcome the demerit, we newly proposed an image processing based algorithm, which can separate reflected light components and conduct parameterization and reconstruction process with respect to surface height information, and then confirmed the reliability of proposed algorithm by experiment.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.229-237
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• 2021

The capabilities of the near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) for obtaining high resolution lateral topographical images as well as for mapping the spectroscopic and optical properties of a sample below the diffraction limit of light have made it an attractive research field for most researchers dealing with optical characteristics of materials in nano scales. The apertured NSOM technique involves confining light into an aperture of sub-wavelength size and using it to illuminate a sample maintained at a distance equal to a fraction of the sub-wavelength aperture (near-field region). In this article, we present a setup for developing NSOM using a cantilever with a sub-wavelength aperture at the tip. A single laser is used for both cantilever deflection measurement and near-field sample excitation. The laser beam is focused at the apex of the cantilever where a portion of the beam is reflected and the other portion goes through the aperture and causes local near-field optical excitation of the sample, which is then raster scanned in the near-field region. The reflected beam is used for an optical beam deflection technique that yields topographical images by controlling the probe-sample in nano-distance. The fluorescence emissions signal is detected in far-field by the help of a silicon avalanche photodiode. The images obtained using this method show a good correlation between the topographical image and the mapping of the fluorescence emissions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.1171-1176
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• 2012

The selective patterning of a carbon nanotube (CNT) forest on a Si substrate has been performed using a femtosecond laser. The high shock wave generated by the femtosecond laser effectively removed the CNTs without damage to the Si substrate. This process has many advantages because it is performed without chemicals and can be easily applied to large-area patterning. The CNTs grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) have a catalyst cap at the end of the nanotube owing to the tip-growth mode mechanism. For the application of an electron emission and biosensor probe, the catalyst cap is usually removed chemically, which damages the surface of the CNT wall. Precise control of the femtosecond laser power and focal position could solve this problem. Furthermore, selective CNT cutting using a femtosecond laser is also possible without any phase change in the CNTs, which is usually observed in the focused ion beam irradiation of CNTs.