• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2017.05a
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• pp.81-81
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• 2017

Nanotechnology is of great importance to molecular biology and medicine because life processes are maintained by the action of a series of molecular nanomachines in the cell machinery. Recent advances in nanoscale materials that possess emergent physical properties and molecular organization hold great promise to impact human health in the diagnostic and therapeutic arenas. In order to be effective, nanomaterials need to navigate the host biology and traffic to relevant biological structures, such as diseased or pathogenic cells. Moreover, nanoparticles intended for human administration must be designed to interact with, and ideally leverage, a living host environment. Inspired by nature, we use peptides to transfer biological trafficking properties to synthetic nanoparticles to achieve targeted delivery of payloads. In this talk, development of nanoscale materials will be presented with a particular focus on applications to three outstanding health problems: bacterial infection, cancer detection, and traumatic brain injury. A biodegradable nanoparticle carrying a peptide toxin trafficked to the bacterial surface has antimicrobial activity in a pneumonia model. Trafficking of a tumor-homing nanoprobes sensitively detects cancer via a high-contrast time-gated imaging system. A neuron-targeted nanoparticle carrying siRNA traffics to neuronal populations and silences genes in a model of traumatic brain injury. Unique combinations of material properties that can be achieved with nanomaterials provide new opportunities in translational nanomedicine. This framework for constructing nanomaterials that leverage bio-inspired molecules to traffic diagnostic and therapeutic payloads can contribute on better understanding of living systems to solve problems in human health.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.132-138
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• 2010

Vibro-contact of cantilever tip is studied with respect to contact mechanics and an elastic characteristic of nanoscale surface is imaged. The contact resonance frequency is calculated theoretically using the spring-mass and Herzian models, and the variation of resonance frequency of cantilever was analyzed when the cantilever was free and contact. The elasticity imaging was also achieved successfully using phase and amplitude signals obtained from the spheroidized steel specimens by prototype ultrasonic AFM.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.445-454
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• 2019

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) nanoparticles have emerged as novel nanomaterials for bio-imaging applications due to its unique layered structure, physicochemical properties, and good biocompatibility. Bio-imaging is one of the most important fields for medical applications in clinical diagnostics and therapeutics of various diseases. Enhanced diagnostic techniques are needed to realize new paradigm for next-generation personalized medicine through nanoscale materials. When nanotechnology is introduced into bio-imaging system, nanoparticle probes can endow imaging techniques with enhanced ability to obtain information about biological system at the molecular level. In this review, we summarize structural features of LDH nanoparticles with current issues of bio-imaging system. LDH nanoparticle probes are also discussed through in vitro as well as in vivo studies in various bio-imaging techniques including fluorescence imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and computed X-ray tomography (CT), which will have the potential in the development of the advanced nanoparticles with high sensitivity and selectivity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.78-78
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• 2015

Metamaterials, artificially structured nanomaterials, have enabled unprecedented phenomena such as invisibility cloaking and negative refraction. Especially, hyperbolic metamaterials also known as indefinite metamaterials have unique dispersion relation where the principal components of its permittivity tensors are not all with the same signs and magnitudes. Such extraordinary dispersion relation results in hyperbolic dispersion relations which lead to a number of interesting phenomena, such as super-resolution effect which transfers evanescent waves to propagating waves at its interface with normal materials and, the propagation of electromagnetic waves with very large wavevectors comparing they are evanescent waves and thus decay quickly in natural materials. In this abstract, I will focus discussing our efforts in achieving the unique optical property overcoming diffraction limit to achieve several extraordinary metamaterials and metadevices demonstration. First, I will present super-resolution imaging device called "hyperlens", which is the first experimental demonstration of near- to far-field imaging at visible light with resolution beyond the diffraction limit in two lateral dimensions. Second, I will show another unique application of metamaterials for miniaturizing optical cavity, a key component to make lasers, into the nanoscale for the first time. It shows the cavity array which successfully captured light in 20nm dimension and show very high figure of merit experimentally. Last, I will discuss the future direction of the hyperbolic metamaterial and outlook for the practical applications. I believe our efforts in sub-wavelength metamaterials having such extraordinary optical properties will lead to further advanced nanophotonics and nanooptics research.

• 한국가시화정보학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.88-91
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• 2007

Animal cells show different behaviors in response to the mechanical properties of the substrates. We hypothesize that the rigidity of the substrates also affects the bacterial motility and controls the colony dynamics. It is found that the colony size of Escherichia colis and Bacillus subtilis grown on the agar plates is correlated with agarose gel concentrations and thus with the substrate rigidity. High- resolution microscopic imaging reveals that bacteria in single colonies form different aggregation patterns on the agar plates with varying gel concentration. We measured the apparent diffusion coefficients in the agarose gel plates made with different gel concentrations. Mathematical modeling and quantitative imaging of dye dispersion in the agar plates suggest that there is a close connection between the diffusion rate and the colony size. Nanoscale pore structures and kinetic constraints in the porous media may have an effect on bacterial colony dynamics.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.1223-1227
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• 2010

In this study, the orientational behavior of thermotropic liquid crystals (LC) supported on a film of protein receptors was examined. Avidin was roller printed and covalently immobilized onto the surface of gold using NHS/EDC chemistry. The orientation of nematic 4-cyano-4'-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) was found to be parallel to the plane of the printed avidin surface before incubation with a solution of biotin. However, protein-receptor complexation induced a random orientation of 5CB, where protein-receptor complexes disturbed the nanoscale topography of the printed protein surface. Atomic force microscopy and ellipsometry was used to confirm printing and the specific interaction of proteins. These results demonstrate that the combination of LC and roller printing can be used to detect specific interactions between biomolecules by manipulating the orientational behavior of LC to the printed protein surfaces.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.165-170
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• 2017

Gas vesicles are intracellular gas-filled protein-shelled nanocompartments. The structures are spindle or cylinder-shaped, and typically $0.1{\sim}2{\mu}m$ in length and 45~250 nm in width. A variety of prokaryotes including photosynthetic bacteria and halophilic archaea form gas vesicles in their cytoplasm. Gas vesicles provide cell buoyancy as flotation devices in aqueous habitats. They are used as nanoscale molecular reporters for ultrasound imaging for biomedical purposes. The structures in halophilic archaea are poorly resolved due to the low signal-to-noise ratio from the high salt concentration in the medium. Such a limitation can be overcome using focused ion beam-thinning or inelastically scattered electrons. As the concentric bodies (~200 nm in diameter) in fungi possess gas-filled cores, it is possible that the concept of gas vesicles could be applied to eukaryotic microbes beyond prokaryotes.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.903-909
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• 2015

In this study, we used GO (graphene oxide) in order to enhance the adhesion between Ag NWs (nanowires) and substrates. By using a mixture solution of GO and Ag NW, a vacuum filtration process was used to fabricate a 50nm diameter thin film. Next, by using a light annealing process, the mechanical and electrical stability of Ag NW network was improved without any other treatment. The physical properties of the Ag NW - GO hybrid transparent conductive thin film was characterized in terms of a bending test, resistance and transmittance test, and nanoscale imaging using field-emission scanning electron microscopy.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.170-177
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• 2018

Colloidally synthesized luminescent nanocrystals (NCs) have attracted tremendous attention due to their unique nanoscale optical and electronic properties. The emission properties of these NCs can be precisely tuned by controlling their size, shape, and composition as well as by introducing appropriate dopant impurities. Nowadays, these NCs are actively utilized for various applications such as optoelectronic devices including light emitting diodes (LEDs), lasers, and solar cells, and bio-medical applications such as imaging agents and bio-sensors. In this review, we classify luminescent nanomaterials into quantum dots (QDs), upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs), and perovskite NCs and present their intrinsic emission mechanism. Furthermore, the recently emerging issues of efficiency, toxicity, and durability in these materials are discussed for better understanding of industry demands. As well, the future outlook will be offered for researchers to guide the direction of future research.

• Ceramist
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.417-428
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• 2019

Even though, nanoscale materials of various shapes and compositions have been synthesized in the liquid, their underlying growth and transformation mechanisms are not well understood due to a lack of analytical methods. The advent of liquid cell for transmission electron microscope (TEM) enables the direct imaging of chemical reactions that occur in liquids with nanometer resolution of the electron microscope (EM). Here, the technical development of liquid cell TEM equipment and their applications to the study of nanomaterials analysis in liquid are discussed. Also new findings discovered through liquid cell TEM studies such as nucleation & growth, coalescence process and transformation are discussed.