• Polymer(Korea)
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.407-411
• /
• 2006

The SiC-based ceramic nanopatterns were prepared by placing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold from DVD master on the spincoated polyvinylsilaeane (PVS) or allylhydridopolycaybosilane (AHPCS) as ceramic precursors to fabricate line pattern via UV-nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL), and subsequent pyrolysis at $800^{\circ}C$ in nitrogen atmosphere. As the dimensional change of polymeric and ceramic patterns was comparatively investigated by AFM and SEM, the shrinkage in height was 38.5% for PVS derived pattern and 24.1% for AHPCS derived pattern while the shrinkage in width was 18.8% for PVS and 16.7% for AHPCS. It indicates that higher ceramic yield of the ceramic precursor resulted in less shrinkage, and the strong adhesion between the substrate and the pattern caused anisotropic shrinkage. This preliminary work suggests that NIL is a promissing route for fabricating ceramic MEMS devices, with the development on the shrinkage control.

• Design & Manufacturing
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.58-65
• /
• 2022

Micro-fluidic chip has been fabricated by lithography process on silicon or glass wafer, casting using PDMS, injection molding of thermoplastics or 3D printing, etc. Among these processes, 3D printing can fabricate micro-fluidic chip directly from the design without master or template for fluidic channel fabricated previously. Due to this direct printing, 3D printing provides very fast and economical method for prototyping micro-fluidic chip comparing to conventional fabrication process such as lithography, PDMS casting or injection molding. Although 3D printing is now used more extensively due to this fast and cheap process done automatically by single printing machine, there are some issues on accuracy or surface characteristics, etc. The accuracy of the shape and size of the micro-channel is limited by the resolution of the printing and printing direction or layering direction in case of SLM type of 3D printing using UV curable resin. In this study, the printing direction and thickness of each printing layer are investigated to see the effect on the size, shape and surface of the micro-channel. A set of micro-channels with different size was designed and arrayed orthogonal. Micro-fluidic chips are 3D printed in different directions to the micro-channel, orthogonal, parallel, or skewed. The shape of the cross-section of the micro-channel and the surface of the micro-channel are photographed using optical microscopy. From a series of experiments, an optimal printing direction and process conditions are investigated for 3D printing of micro-fluidic chip.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.64-68
• /
• 2014

This paper introduces the use of a crown-shaped (CR) lens to effectively diffuse the light from a light-emitting diode (LED) without any loss in the light intensity, in contrast to polymer-bulb-type diffusers. The diffusion lens was designed based on the Snell's law, which describes the physical path of a ray passing through the boundary between different media. CR lenses were fabricated by polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) casting and UV-embossing processes, which used a pre-designed metal mold and UV-curable resin, respectively. Through experiments and optical evaluations, it was verified that the newly proposed CR lens not only decreased the vertical light strength and glare effect from an LED light source but also improved the diffusion characteristics while maintaining the quality of the LED's light intensity.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.28 no.9
• /
• pp.1429-1434
• /
• 2004

Immunoassay is one of the important analytical methods for clinical diagnoses and biochemical studies, but needs a long time, troublesome procedures and expensive reagents. In this study, therefore, we propose the micro filter chip with microbeads for immunoassay, which has pillar structures. The advantage of the proposed micro filter chip is to use simple fabrication process and cheap materials. The mold was made by the photolithography technique with Si wafer and negative photoresist SU-8. The replica was made of PDMS, bonded on the pyrex glass. The micro filter chip consists of inlet channel, filter chamber and outlet channel. HBV (Hepatitius B virus) monoclonal antibody (Ag1) labeled with biotin were immobilized onto streptavidin coated beads of 30∼50 $\mu$m size. Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled HBV monoclonal antibody (Ag8) was used to detect HBsAg (Hebatitis B virus surface Antigen), and fluorescence intensity was monitored by epi-fluorescence microscope. In this study, the immune response of less than 30 min was obtained with with the use of 100 $m\ell$ of sample.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2008.07a
• /
• pp.1476-1477
• /
• 2008

This paper reports on a flexible flap valve actuated by electromagnetic force under a constant pressure source. The flexible flap valve consists of the three main components: a flexible flap with a steel disk embedded in PDMS, an electromagnetic actuator and two glass plates with inlet and outlet. Sealing lip structures for improving the valve characteristics are added on the outlet of the bottom glass substrate. The flap valve is fabricated by the spin-coating process, the EDM process, SU-8 mold process and oxygen plasma treatment. The dimension of an assembled flap valve is $12mm{\times}20mm{\times}28mm$. The stroke volume of the flap valve is measured for various pressures and open times. When the input voltage of 30 V is applied for 0.33 s, the minimum stroke volume of the flap valve is 70 ${\mu}L$ at 50 kPa.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2008.07a
• /
• pp.1484-1485
• /
• 2008

The control of the number and dimension of nanowires is essential for dielectrophoretic(DEP) nanoscale assembly process. However, it is difficult to control the number of nanowires assembled between the electrodes. We have developed a nanowire diluter device, which consists of a glass substrate with gold electrodes and a PDMS layer with microchannel. The diluter device is fabricated by the conventional and soft lithographies using a SU-8 mold. Nickel nanowires (30${\mu}m$-long) are fabricated by a template-directed electrodeposition process using nanoporous alumina templates. A solution containing nanowires is injected into an inlet whereby pulsed voltages are applied to 16 pairs of electrodes in this experiment. The nanowires are trapped or released depending on the pulsed electric field from inlet to outlet (the channel). Therefore, the number of nanowires can be decreased correspondingly if the fixed frequency at each electrode is decreased from electrode to electrode.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.08a
• /
• pp.287-287
• /
• 2010

We report a new direct patterning method, called liquid bridge-mediated nanotransfer molding (LB-nTM), for the formation of two- or three-dimensional structures with feature sizes between tens of nanometers and tens of micron over large areas. LB-nTM is based on the direct transfer of various materials from a mold to a substrate via a liquid bridge between them. This procedure can be adopted for automated direct printing machines that generate patterns of functional materials with a wide range of feature sizes on diverse substrates. Arrays of TIPS-PEN TFTs were fabricated on 4" polyethersulfone (PES) substrates by LB-nTM using PDMS molds. An inverted staggered structure was employed in the TFT device fabrication. A 150 nm-thick indium-tin oxide (ITO) gate electrode and a 200 nm-thick SiO2dielectric layer were formed on a PES substrate by sputter deposition. An array of TIPS-PEN patterns (thickness: 60 nm) as active channel layers was fabricated on the substrate by LB-nTM. The nominal channel length of the TIPS-PEN TFT was 10 mm, while the channel width was 135 mm. Finally, the source and drain electrodes of 200 nm-thick Ag were defined on the substrate by LB-nTM. The TIPS-PEN TFTs can endure strenuous bending and are also transparent in the visible range, and therefore potentially useful for flexible and invisible electronics.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
• /
• v.12 no.7
• /
• pp.640-646
• /
• 2003

The nanoprobe based on lithography, mainly represented by SPM based technologies, has been recognized as potential application to fabricate the surface nanostructures because of its operational versatility and simplicity. The objective of the work is to suggest new mastless pattern fabrication technique using the combination of machining by nanoindenter and KOH wet etching. The scratch option of the nanoindenter is a very promising method for obtaining nanometer scale features on a large size specimen because it has a very wide working area and load range. Sample line patterns were machined on a silicon surface, which has a native oxide on it, by constant load scratch (CLS) of the Nanoindenter with a Berkovich diamond tip, and they were etched in KOH solutions to investigate chemical characteristics of the machined silicon surface. After the etching process, the convex structure was made because of masking effect of the affected layer generated by nano-scratch. On the basis of this fact, some line patterns with convex structures were fabricated. Achieved patterns can be used as a mold that will be used for mass production processes such as nanoimprint or PDMS molding process. All morphological data of scratch traces were scanned using atomic force microscope (AFM).

• Design & Manufacturing
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.11-16
• /
• 2021

Recently, three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems, which are superior to conventional two-dimensional (2D) vascular systems that mimic the in vivo environment, are being actively studied to reproduce drug responses and cell differentiation in organisms. Conventional two-dimensional cell culture methods (scaffold-based and non-scaffold-based) have a limited cell growth rate because the culture cannot supply the culture medium as consistently as microvessels. To solve this problem, we would like to propose a 3D culture system with an environment similar to living cells by continuously supplying the culture medium to the bottom of the 3D cell support. The 3D culture system is a structure in which microvascular structures are combined under a scaffold (agar, collagen, etc.) where cells can settle and grow. First, we have manufactured molds for the formation of four types of microvessel-mimicking chips: width / height ①100 ㎛ / 100 ㎛, ②100 ㎛ / 50 ㎛, ③ 150 ㎛ / 100 ㎛, and ④ 200 ㎛ / 100 ㎛. By injection molding, four types of microfluidic chips were made with GPPS (general purpose polystyrene), and a 100㎛-thick PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) film was attached to the top of each microfluidic chip. As a result of observing the flow of the culture medium in the microchannel, it was confirmed that when the aspect ratio (height/width) of the microchannel is 1.5 or more, the fluid flows from the inlet to the outlet without a backflow phenomenon. In addition, the culture efficiency experiments of colorectal cancer cells (SW490) were performed in a 3D culture system in which PDMS films with different pore diameters (1/25/45 ㎛) were combined on a microfluidic chip. As a result, it was found that the cell growth rate increased up to 1.3 times and the cell death rate decreased by 71% as a result of the 3D culture system having a hole membrane with a diameter of 10 ㎛ or more compared to the conventional commercial. Based on the results of this study, it is possible to expand and build various 3D cell culture systems that can maximize cell culture efficiency by cell type by adjusting the shape of the microchannel, the size of the film hole, and the flow rate of the inlet.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.247-255
• /
• 2018

In this work, glucose solution and sodium chloride solution were distinguished noninvasively using a microwave complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR). Based on the electrical properties of the two solutions measured using a open-ended coaxial probe, a CSRR was designed and fabricated for operation at a specific frequency that facilitates differentiating the two solutions. Furthermore, a polydimethylsiloxane mold was fabricated to concentrate the solution at a region where the electric field of the resonator was strongest, and a laminating film was used to prevent contact between the solution and resonator. Experiments were performed by dropping $50{\mu}L$ of the solution in steps of 100 mg/dL up to a maximum human blood glucose level of 400 mg/dL. Our experiments confirmed that the transmission coefficients ($S_{21}$) of glucose solution and sodium chloride solution exhibit variations of -0.06 dB and 0.14 dB, respectively, per 100 mg/dL concentration change at the resonance frequency. Thus, the opposite trends in the variation of $S_{21}$ with change in the concentration of the two solutions can be used to distinguish between them.