• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.20-20
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• 2010

The effect of excimer laser annealing on the structural and dielectric behaviors of $PbZr_{0.52}Ti_{0.48}O_3$ (PZT) thin films has been investigated. The amorphous PZT thin films were prepared on Pt/Ti/$SiO_2$/Si substrates by a sol-gel method. The PZT precursor was prepared from lead acetate, zirconium acetylacetonate, and titanium isopropoxide. The starting materials were dissolved in n-propanol and 1,3-propanediol. After, the amorphous PZT thin films were laser-annealed (using KrF excimer laser) as a function of the laser energy density and the number of laser pulse. Structural properties of PZT thin films are characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The dielectric characterization was done on a RT66A test system and a Agilent 4294A impedance analyzer. The PZT thin films show that excimer laser irradiation drastically improved the crystallization and dielectric properties of the PZT thin films, depending on the energy density and the pulse number.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.33-36
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• 2004

Amorphous GaN film was deposited using a laser ablation of the highly densified GaN target. Through the surface morphological and compositional analysis of films deposited under various laser energies and Ar gas pressures, the film deposited under the pressure of 10 Pa were found to be amorphous GaN with the smooth surface. In particular, the film at 200 mJ/pulse showed the enhanced crystallinity and stoichiometric composition, compared with those of the films at relatively lower laser energy. The strong band-gap emission at 2.8 eV was observed from amorphous GaN film in the room temperature photoluminescence spectra, showing the highest efficiency in the film at 200 mJ/pulse under 10 Pa.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.41-45
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• 2013

Two-photon microscopy (TPM) is minimally-invasive 3D fluorescence microscopy based on nonlinear excitation, and TPM can visualize cellular structures based on auto-fluorescence. Line-scanning TPM is one of high-speed TPM methods without sacrificing the image resolution by using spatial and temporal focusing. In this paper, we developed line-scanning TPM based on spatial and temporal focusing for auto-fluorescence imaging by exciting the tryptophan. Laser source for this system was an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) and it made near 570 nm femtosecond pulse laser. It had 200fs pulse width and 1.72 nm bandwidth, so that the achievable depth resolution was 2.41um and field of view (FOV) is 10.8um. From the characterization, our system has 3.0 um depth resolution and 12.3 um FOV. We visualized fixed leukocyte cell sample and compared with point scanning system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.138-148
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• 2016

Measurement of elastic constants is crucial for engineering aspects of predicting the behavior of materials under load as well as structural health monitoring of material degradation. Ultrasonic velocity measurement for material properties has been broadly used as a nondestructive evaluation method for material characterization. In particular, pulse-echo method has been extensively utilized as it is not only simple but also effective when only one side of the inspected objects is accessible. However, the conventional technique in this approach measures longitudinal and shear waves individually to obtain their velocities. This produces a set of two data for each measurement. This paper proposes a simultaneous sensing system of longitudinal waves and shear waves for elastic constant measurement. The proposed system senses both these waves simultaneously as a single overlapped signal, which is then analyzed to calculate both the ultrasonic velocities for obtaining elastic constants. Therefore, this system requires just half the number of data to obtain elastic constants compared to the conventional individual measurement. The results of the proposed simultaneous measurement had smaller standard deviations than those in the individual measurement. These results validate that the proposed approach improves the efficiency and reliability of ultrasonic elastic constant measurement by reducing the complexity of the measurement system, its operating procedures, and the number of data.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.58-58
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• 2011

Nickel-ceramics nanocomposite coatings can be applied as the wear resistance coating, corrosion protection of underlying materials, and decorative coatings. Hence, Nickel based nanocomposite coatings, especially Ni-SiC, have been extensively studied in recent years. However, more often agglomeration problem of the nanoparticles in the nickel matrix can cause deterioration of the mechanical properties rather than improvement. The homogeneous distribution of the nanoparticles in the matrix coating is still being challenging. In this experiment, electrochemical deposition of Ni-SiC composite coating was done in presence of ultrasound. The effects of different ultrasonic powers and frequencies on the nanoparticle dispersion were studied. The electrodeposition was carried out in nickel sulfamate bath by applying pulse current technique. Compared to the conventional mechanical stirring technique to prevent nanoparticles agglomeration and sedimentation during composite electrodeposition, the aid of ultrasonic dispersion along with mechanical stirring has been found to be more effective not only for the nanoparticles dispersion, but also for the mechanical properties of the electrodeposited coatings. Nanoparticles were found to be distributed homogeneously with reduced agglomeration. The microstructure of the composite coating has also been changed, allowing some random orientations of the nickel crystallite grain growths, smooth surface, and finer grains. As a consequence, better mechanical properties of the composites were observed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.67 no.4
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• pp.359-368
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• 2018

In this paper, a method is presented to identify the physical and modal parameters of multistory shear building based on substructural technique using block pulse generalized operational matrix and genetic algorithm. The substructure approach divides a complete structure into several substructures in order to significantly reduce the number of unknown parameters for each substructure so that identification processes can be independently conducted on each substructure. Block pulse functions are set of orthogonal functions that have been used in recent years as useful tools in signal characterization. Assuming that the input-outputs data of the system are known, their original BP coefficients can be calculated using numerical method. By using generalized BP operational matrices, substructural dynamic vibration equations can be converted into algebraic equations and based on BP coefficient for each story can be estimated. A cost function can be defined for each story based on original and estimated BP coefficients and physical parameters such as mass, stiffness and damping can be obtained by minimizing cost functions with genetic algorithm. Then, the modal parameters can be computed based on physical parameters. This method does not require that all floors are equipped with sensor simultaneously. To prove the validity, numerical simulation of a shear building excited by two different normally distributed random signals is presented. To evaluate the noise effect, measurement random white noise is added to the noise-free structural responses. The results reveal the proposed method can be beneficial in structural identification with less computational expenses and high accuracy.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.53-63
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• 2019

Background: As neutron fields are always accompanied by gamma rays, it is essential to distinguish neutrons from gamma rays in the detection of neutrons. Neutrons and gamma rays can be separated by pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods. Recently, we performed characterization of a stilbene scintillator detector and an EJ-301 liquid scintillator detector with a high-speed digitizer DT5730 and investigated optimized PSD variables for both detectors. This study is for providing a basis for developing fast neutron/gamma-ray dual-particle imager. Materials and Methods: We conducted PSD experiments using stilbene scintillator and EJ-301 liquid scintillator and evaluated neutron and gamma ray discriminability of each PSD method with a $^{137}Cs$ gamma source and a $^{252}Cf$ neutron source. We implemented digital signal processing techniques to apply two PSD methods - the charge comparison (CC) method and the constant time discrimination (CTD) method - to distinguish neutrons from gamma rays. We tried to find optimized PSD variables giving the best discriminability in a given experimental condition. Results and Discussion: For the stilbene scintillator detector, the charge comparison method and the constant time discrimination method both delivered the PSD FOM values of 1.7. For the EJ-301 liquid scintillator detector, both PSD methods delivered the PSD FOM values of 1.79. With the same PSD variables, PSD performance was excellent in $300{\pm}100keVee$, $500{\pm}100keVee$, and $700{\pm}100keVee$ energy regions. This result shows that we can achieve an effective discrimination of neutrons from gamma rays using these scintillator detector systems. Conclusion: We applied both PSD methods to a stilbene and a liquid scintillator and optimized the PSD performance represented by FOM values. We observed a good separation performance of both scintillators combined with a high-speed digitizer and digital PSD. These results will provide reference values for the dual-particle imager we are developing, which can image both fast neutrons and gamma rays simultaneously.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.1021-1030
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• 2023

We propose an overall procedure for measuring and unfolding fast neutron spectra using a trans-stilbene scintillation detector. Detector characterization was described, including the information on energy calibration, detector resolution, and nonproportionality response. The digital charge comparison method was used for the investigation of neutron-gamma Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD). A pair of values of 600 ns pulse width and 24 ns delay time was found as the optimized conditions for PSD. A fitting technique was introduced to increase the trans-stilbene Proton Response Function (PRF) by 28% based on comparison of the simulated and experimental electron-equivalent distributions by the Cf-252 source. The detector response matrix was constructed by Monte-Carlo simulation and the spectrum unfolding was implemented using the iterative Bayesian method. The unfolding of simulated and measured spectra of Cf-252 and AmBe neutron sources indicates reliable, stable and no-bias results. The unfolding technique was also validated by the measured cosmic-ray induced neutron flux. Our approach is promising for fast neutron detection and spectroscopy.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.4E
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• pp.140-145
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• 2004

A laboratory study was carried out to investigate the change of ultrasonic velocity as a function of temperature for fluid mud (i.e., suspension). Pulse transmission technique with ultrasonic wave was used for ultrasonic velocity measurement. The five samples for fluid mud were prepared for concentration range of $30.6{\%}\;(1.24\;g/cm^{3}\;in\;density),\;23.3{\%}\;(1.19\;g/cm^{3}),\;11.5{\%}(1.10\;g/cm^{3}),\;7.8{\%}\;(1.08\;g/cm^{3}),\;and\;3.8{\%}\;(1.05\;g/cm^{3})$ by weight. The ultrasonic velocity in fluid mud was investigated to increase $(approximately\;2.83\;to\;4.95\;m/s/^{\circ}C)$ with increasing temperature, due to the effect of viscosity and compressibility of water with changing temperature. But the increasing rate tends to decrease at temperature higher than $30^{\circ}C,$ caused by the effect of viscosity. The concentration of fluid mud more affect to the ultrasonic velocity at higher temperature range than that at lower temperature. Overall the temperature effect on the ultrasonic velocity in fluid mud was a similar rate as for distilled water and seawater, suggesting fluid mud significantly depends on the behavior of water.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.159-162
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• 2002

Innovative and nondestructive characterization techniques have been developed to locate and quantify nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) in the vadose and saturated zones in the subsurface environment. One such technique is the partitioning interwell tracer test (PITT). The PITT is a simultaneous displacement of partitioning and non-partitioning tracers through a subsurface formation. Partitioning tracers will partition into the NAPL during their transport through NAPL-contaminated formations. Mean travel times of partitioning and non-partitioning tracers are used to estimate the quantity of NAPL encountered by the displaced tracer pulse. Travel times are directly proportional to the partitioning coefficient and the volume of NAPL contacted in the subsurface environment. This paper discusses the conceptual background, design and implementation of PITTs. (This document has not been subjected to Agency review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred.)