• Research in Vestibular Science
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.142-151
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• 2018

Objectives: Excitability o medial vestibular nucleus (MVN) in the brainstem can be affected by changes in the arterial blood pressure. Several animal studies have demonstrated that acute hypotension results in the alteration of multiunit activities and expression of cFos protein in the MVN. In the field of extracellular electrophysiological recording, tetrode technology and spike sorting algorithms can easily identify single unit activity from multiunit activities in the brain. However, detailed properties of electrophysiological changes in single unit of the MVN during acute hypotension have been unknown. Methods: Therefore, we applied tetrode techniques and electrophysiological characterization methods to know the effect of acute hypotension on single unit activities of the MVN of rats. Results: Two or 3 types of unit could be classified according to the morphology of spikes and firing properties of neurons. Acute hypotension elicited 4 types of changes in spontaneous firing of single unit in the MVN. Most of these neurons showed excitatory responses for about within 1 minute after the induction of acute hypotension and then returned to the baseline activity 10 minutes after the injection of sodium nitroprusside. There was also gradual increase in spontaneous firing in some units. In contrast small proportion of units showed rapid reduction of firing rate just after acute hypotension. Conclusions: Therefore, application of tetrode technology and spike sorting algorithms is another method for the monitoring of electrical activity of vestibular nuclear during acute hypotension.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.73-78
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• 2017

A tetrode is one of the neural electrodes, and it is widely used to record neural signals in the brain of a freely moving animal. The impedance of a neural electrode is an important parameter because it determines the signal-to-noise ratio of the recorded neural signals. Here, we developed a modification technique using carbon nanotube-polypyrrole composite nanostructures to decrease the impedances of tetrodes. The synthesis of the carbon nanotube and polypyrrole nanostructures was performed in two steps. In the first step, randomly dispersed carbon nanotubes and pyrrole monomers were gathered and aligned on the tetrode electrode. Next, they were electro-polymerized on the electrode surface. As the applied time (step-1 and step-2) and the offset voltage increased, the impedances of the tetrodes decreased. The modification technique is, therefore, an important and useful of lowering the impedances of tetrodes.

• Journal of Information Display
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2006

A 10" carbon nanotube field emission display device was fabricated with a novel structure with a hopping electron spacer (HES) by screen printing technique. HES plays a role of preventing the broadening of electron beams emitted from carbon nanotubes without electrical discharge during operation. The structure of the novel tetrode is composed of carbon nanotube emitters on a cathode electrode, a gate electrode, an extracting electrode coated on the top side of a HES, and an anode. HES contains funnel-shaped holes of which the inner surfaces are coated with MgO. Electrons extracted through the gate are collected inside the funnel-shaped holes. They hop along the hole surface to the top extracting electrode. In this study the effects of the addition of HES on emission characteristics of field emission display were investigated. An active ozone treatment for the complete removal of residues of organic binders in the emitter devices was applied to the field emission display panel as a post-treatment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.357-363
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• 2004

A prototype long pulse ion source was developed, and the beam extraction experiments of the ion source were carried out at the Neutral Beam Test Stand (NBTS) of the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR). The ion source consists of a magnetic bucket plasma generator, with multi-pole cusp fields, and a set of tetrode accelerators with circular apertures. Design requirements for the ion source were a 120kV/65A deuterium beam and a 300 s pulse length. Arc discharges of the plasma generator were controlled by using the emission-limited mode, in turn controlled by the applied heating voltage of the cathode filaments. Stable and efficient arc plasmas with a maximum arc power of 100 kW were produced using the constant power mode operation of an arc power supply. A maximum ion density of $8.3{\times}10^{11}\;cm^{-3}$ was obtained by using electrostatic probes, and an optimum arc efficiency of 0.46 A/kW was estimated. The accelerating and decelerating voltages were applied repeatedly, using the re-triggering mode operation of the high voltage switches during a beam pulse, when beam disruptions occurred. The decelerating voltage was always applied prior to the accelerating voltage, to suppress effectively the back-streaming electrons produced at the time of an initial beam formation, by the pre-programmed fast-switch control system. A maximum beam power of 0.9 MW (i.e. $70\;kV{\times}12.5\;A$) with hydrogen was measured for a pulse duration of 0.8 s. Optimum beam perveance, deduced from the ratio of the gradient grid current to the total beam current, was $0.7\;{\mu}perv$. Stable beams for a long pulse duration of $5{\sim}10\;s$ were tested at low accelerating voltages.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.550-551
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• 2013

Large-area RF-driven ion source is being developed at Germany for the heating and current drive of ITER plasmas. Negative hydrogen (deuterium) ion sources are major components of neutral beam injection systems in future large-scale fusion experiments such as ITER and DEMO. RF ion sources for the production of positive hydrogen ions have been successfully developed at IPP (Max-Planck- Institute for Plasma Physics, Garching) for ASDEX-U and W7-AS neutral beam injection (NBI) systems. In recent, the first NBI system (NBI-1) has been developed successfully for the KSTAR. The first and second long-pulse ion sources (LPIS-1 and LPIS-2) of NBI-1 system consist of a magnetic bucket plasma generator with multi-pole cusp fields, filament heating structure, and a set of tetrode accelerators with circular apertures. There is a development plan of large-area RF ion source at KAERI to extract the positive ions, which can be used for the second NBI (NBI-2) system of KSTAR, and to extract the negative ions for future fusion devices such as ITER and K-DEMO. The large-area RF ion source consists of a driver region, including a helical antenna (6-turn copper tube with an outer diameter of 6 mm) and a discharge chamber (ceramic and/or quartz tubes with an inner diameter of 200 mm, a height of 150 mm, and a thickness of 8 mm), and an expansion region (magnetic bucket of prototype LPIS in the KAERI). RF power can be transferred up to 10 kW with a fixed frequency of 2 MHz through a matching circuit (auto- and manual-matching apparatus). Argon gas is commonly injected to the initial ignition of RF plasma discharge, and then hydrogen gas instead of argon gas is finally injected for the RF plasma sustainment. The uniformities of plasma density and electron temperature at the lowest area of expansion region (a distance of 300 mm from the driver region) are measured by using two electrostatic probes in the directions of short- and long-dimension of expansion region.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.269-269
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• 2012

A new ion source has been designed, fabricated, and installed at the NBTS (Neutral Beam Test Stand) at the KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) site. The goalis to provide a 100 keV, 2MW deuterium neutral beam injection as an auxiliary heating of KSTAR (Korea Super Tokamak Advanced Research). To cope with power demand, an ion current of 50 A is required considering the beam power loss and neutralization efficiency. The new ion source consists of a magnetic cusp bucket plasma generator and a set of tetrode accelerators with circular copper apertures. The plasma generator for the new ion source has the same design concept as the modified JAEA multi-cusp plasma generator for the KSTAR prototype ion source. The dimensions of the plasma generator are a cross section of $59{\times}25cm^2$ with a 32.5 cm depth. The anode has azimuthal arrays of Nd-Fe permanent magnets (3.4 kG at surface) in the bucket and an electron dump, which makes 9 cusp lines including the electron dump. The discharge properties were investigated preliminarily to enhance the efficiency of the beam extraction. The discharge of the new ion source was mainly controlled by a constant power mode of operation. The discharge of the plasma generator was initiated by the support of primary electrons emitted from the cathode, consisting of 12 tungsten filaments with a hair-pin type (diameter = 2.0 mm). The arc discharge of the new ion source was achieved easily up to an arc power of 80 kW (80 V/1000 A) with hydrogen gas. The 80 kW capacity seems sufficient for the arc power supply to attain the goal of arc efficiency (beam extracted current/discharge input power = 0.8 A/kW). The accelerator of the new ion source consists of four grids: plasma grid (G1), gradient grid (G2), suppressor grid (G3), and ground grid (G4). Each grid has 280 EA circular apertures. The performance tests of the new ion source accelerator were also finished including accelerator conditioning. A hydrogen ion beam was successfully extracted up to 100 keV /60 A. The optimum perveance is defined where the beam divergence is at a minimum was also investigated experimentally. The optimum hydrogen beam perveance is over $2.3{\mu}P$ at 60 keV, and the beam divergence angle is below $1.0^{\circ}$. Thus, the new ion source is expected to be capable of extracting more than a 5 MW deuterium ion beam power at 100 keV. This ion source can deliver ~2 MW of neutral beam power to KSTAR tokamak plasma for the 2012 campaign.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.240-240
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• 2011

The first neutral beam injector (NBI-1) has been developed for the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) tokamak. A first long pulse ion source (LPIS-1) has been installed on the NBI-1 for an auxiliary heating and current drive of KSTAR core plasmas. Performance of ion and neutral beam extractions in the LPIS-1 was investigated initially on the KSTAR NBI-1 system, prior to the neutral beam injection into the main plasmas. The ion source consists of a JAEA magnetic bucket plasma generator with multi-pole cusp fields and a set of KAERI prototype-III tetrode accelerators with circular apertures. The inner volume of plasma generator and accelerator column in the LPIS-1 is approximately 123 liters. Final design requirements for the ion source were a 120 kV/ 65 A deuterium beam and a 300 s pulse length. The extraction of ion beams was initiated by the formation of arc plasmas in the LPIS-1, called as an arc-beam extraction method. A stable ion beam extraction of LPIS-1 has been achieved up to an 100 kV/42 A for a 4 s pulse length and an 80 kV/25 A for a 14 s pulse length. Optimum beam perveance of 1.21 microperv has been found at an accelerating voltage of 80 kV. Neutralization efficiency has been measured by using a water flow calorimetry (WFC) method of calorimeter and an operation of bending magnet. The full-energy species of ion beams have been detected by using the diagnostic method of optical multichannel analyzer (OMA). An arc efficiency of the LPIS was 0.6~1.1 A/kW depending on the operating conditions of arc discharge.