• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.10 s.175
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• pp.17-25
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.1365-1368
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• 2004

A scheme to control the laser power and the exposure time was studied to fabricate precise microstructures using the nanostereolithography (nSL) process. Some recent works have shown that a three-dimensional (3D) microstructure can be fabricated by the photopolymerizing process which is induced by two-photon absorption (TPA) with a femtosecond pulse laser. TPA provides the ability to confine photochemical and physical reactions within the order of laser wavelength, so neardiffraction limit features can be produced. In the nSL process, voxels are continuously generated to form a layer and then another layer is stacked in the normal direction of a plane to construct a 3D structure. Thus, fabrication of a voxel with low aspect ratio and small diameter is one of the most important parameters for fabricating precise 3D microstructures. In this work, the mechanism of a voxel formation is studied and a scheme on the control of laser power and exposure for minimizing aspect ratio of a voxel is proposed.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.45-49
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• 2006

A nano-stereolithography (NSL) process has been developed for the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) micro-devices with high spatital resolution of approximately 100 nm. In the NSL process, a complicated 3D structure can be created by stacking layer-by-layer, so it does not require any sacrificial layer or any supporting structure. A laminated layer was fabricated by means of solidifying liquid-state monomers using two-photon absorption (TPA) which was induced by a femtosecond laser. When the fabrication of a 3D stacked structure was finished, unsolidified liquid resins were rinsed by ethanol to develop the fabricated structures; then, the polymerized structure was only left on the glass substrate. Through this work, several 3D microstructures such as a micro-channel, shell structures, and photonic crystals were fabricated to evaluate the possibility of the developed system.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.418-421
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• 2005

Three-dimensional (3D) microfabrication process using two-photon polymerization (TPP) is developed to fabricate the curved microstructures in a layer, which can be applied potentially to optical MEMS, nano/micro-devices, etc. A 3D curved structure can be expressed using the same height-contours that are defined by symbolic colors which consist of 14 colors. Then, the designed bitmap figure is transformed into a multi-exposure voxel matrix (MVM). In this work a multi-exposure voxel matrix scanning method is used to generate various heights of voxels according to each laser exposure time that is assigned to the symbolic colors. An objective lens with a numerical aperture of 1.25 is employed to enlarge the variation of a voxel height in the range of 1.2 to 6.4 um which can be controlled easily using the various exposure time. Though this work some 3D curved micro-shapes are fabricated directly to demonstrate the usefulness of the process without a laminating process that is generally required in a micro-stereolithography process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.264-267
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• 2005

A subregional slicing method (SSM) is proposed to increase the nanofabrication efficiency of a nano-stereolithography (NSL) process based on two-photon polymerization (TPP). The NSL process can be used to fabricate 3D microstructures via the accumulation of layers of uniform thickness; hence, the precision of the final 3D microstructure depends on the layer thickness. The use of a uniform layer thickness means that, to fabricate a precise microstructure, a large number of thin slices is inevitably required. leading to long processing times. In the SSM proposed here, however, the 3D microstructure is divided into several subregions on the basis of the geometric slope, and then each of these subregions is uniformly sliced with a layer thickness determined by the geometric slope characteristics of each subregion. Subregions with gentle slopes are sliced with thin layer thicknesses, whereas subregions with steep slopes are sliced with thick layer thicknesses. Here, we describe the procedure of the SSM based on TPP, and discuss the fabrication efficiency of the method through the fabrication of a 3D microstructure.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.292-299
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• 2005

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.29 no.7 s.238
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• pp.998-1004
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• 2005

A nano-stereolithography (NSL) process has been developed for fabrication of 3D shell structures which can be applied to various nano/micro-fluidic devices. By the process, a complicated 3D shell structure on a scale of several microns can be fabricated using lamination of layers with a resolution of 150 nm in size, so it does not require the use of my sacrificial layer or any supporting structure. A layer was fabricated by means of solidifying liquid-state monomers using two-photon absorption (TPA) induced using a femtosecond laser processing. When the polymerization process is finished, unsolidified liquid state resins can be removed easily by dropping several droplets of ethanol fur developing the fabricated structure. Through this work, some 3D shell structures, which can be applied to various applications such as nano/micro-fluidic devices and MEMS system, were fabricated using the developed process.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.27 no.10
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• pp.93-99
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• 2010

A nano-stereolithography is the direct patterning process with a nanoscale resolution using twophoton absorption induced by a femtosecond laser. However, in the majority of the works, the fabrication of 3D microstructures have been done only onto transparent glass due to the use of an oil immersion objective lens for achieving a high resolution. In this work, the coaxial illumination and the auto-focusing system are proposed for the direct patterning of nano-precision patterns on an opaque substrate such as a silicon wafer and a metal substrate. Through this work, 3D polymer structures and metallic patterns are fabricated on a silicon wafer using the developed process.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.180-187
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• 2004

The miniaturization technologies are perceived as potential key technologies of the future. They will bring about completely different ways in which people and machines interact with the physical world. However, at the present time, the primary technologies used fur miniaturization are dependent on the microelectronic fabrication techniques. The principal shortcomings associated with such techniques are related to the inability of to produce arbitrary three-dimensional features not only in electronics but also in a wide range of metallic materials. In this paper, a ultramicro-stereolithography system assisted with a femto-second laser was developed to fabricate the arbitrary three-dimensional nano/micro-scaled features. In the developed process, a femto-second laser is projected according to CAD data on a photosensitive monomer resin, it induces polymerization of the liquid resin. After the polymerization, a droplet of ethanol is dropped to remove the liquid resin and then the polymerized nano-scaled features only remain. By a newly developed process, miniature devices for an extremely wide range of applications would become a technologically feasible reality. Some of nano/micro-scaled features as examples were fabricated to prove the usefulness of this study at the fundamental stage.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.11 s.188
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• pp.7-16
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• 2006