• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.777-782
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• 2011

Micro features on the surface are well-known to have significant effects on optical or mechanical properties such as the optical interference, reflectance at the surface, contact angle, interfacial friction, etc. These surface micro features are increasingly employed to enhance the functionality of the applications in various application areas such as optical components for LCD or solar panel. Diverse surface features have been proposed and some of them are showing excellent efficiency or functionality, especially in optical applications. Most applications employing the micro features need manufacturing process for mass production and the injection molding and roll-to-roll forming, which are typical processes for mass production adopting polymeric materials, may be also preferred for micro patterned plastic product. Since the functionality or efficiency of the surface structures generally depends on the shape and the size of the structure itself or the array of the structures on the surface, it would be very important to replicate the features very precisely as being designed during the molding the micro pattern applications. In this paper, a series of research activities is introduced for roll-to-roll forming of micro patterned film including filling of patterns with UV curable resin, demolding of surface structures from the roll tool, control of surface energy and cure shrinkage of resin and dispose time and intensity of the UV light for curing of UV curable resin.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.16 no.1 s.91
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• pp.42-47
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• 2007

LCD-BLU is one of kernel parts of LCD and it consists of several optical sheets: LGP, light source and mold frame. The LGP of LCD-BLU is usually manufactured by etching process and forming numerous dots with $50\sim300{\mu}m$ diameter on the surface. But the surface of the etched dots of LGP is very rough due to the characteristics of the etching process during the mold fabrication, so that its light loss is high along with the dispersion of light into the surface. Accordingly, there is a limit in raising the luminance of LCD-BLU. In order to overcome the limit of current etched dot patterned LGP, optical pattern with continuous microlens was designed using optical simulation CAE. Also, a mold with continuous micro-lens was fabricated by UV-LiGA reflow process and applied to 7 inch size of navigator LCD-BLU in the present study.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.199-205
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• 2017

In this study, (3,4-epoxycyclohexane)methyl 3,4-epoxycyclohexylcarboxylate acrylate was synthesized by reacting (3,4-epoxycyclohexane)methyl 3,4-epoxycyclohexylcarboxylate with acrylic acid to minimize hardening shrinkage and to improve heat resistance, which are known as disadvantages of photopolymers for 3D printing application. Urethane acrylate was synthesized by reacting 1,3,5-triazine-2,4,6-triamino alcohol, 2-hexylethyl acrylate, and isophorone diisocyanate in order to improve the mechanical properties without deteriorating the heat resistance. The physical properties before and after the synthesis of the acrylate and the mechanical properties when the urethane acrylate was applied were investigated. The reaction progress of the composite was examined by FTIR and $^{13}C$ NMR. The heat deflection temperature, flexural strength, and surface hardness of the molding were measured. The curing behavior by Photo-DSC ultraviolet irradiation was also examined.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.173-181
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• 2007

Out door exposure to daylight and weather climate conditions can cause adverse effect on the properties of automotive plastic materials. The effects of sunlight exposure, especially ultra violet (UV) radiation, can break down the chemical bonds in a polymeric material. This degradation process is called photo-degradation and ultimately leads to color changes, cracking, chalking, the loss of physical properties and deterioration of other properties. To explore the effect of sunlight exposure on the automotive materials, this study investigated photo-oxidation degree and surface property change of molding parts by analytical methods. For the further study, accelerated weathering test methods are proposed, which can correlate with out door weathering, to predict long term performance of automotive plastic materials.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.1 s.82
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• pp.21-26
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• 2006

A optical head unit for nano optical probe array was developed. The optical probe array is generated by Talbot effect. The shape and thickness of microlens array(MLA) were designed to minimize the spot size at the foci of MLA. To increase the optical efficiency of the system and obtain the large tolerance for fabrication, aperture size was theoretically optimized. Then microlens illuminated aperture array(MLIAA) as an optical head unit was fabricated using a ultra violet(UV) molding process on aluminum aperture array. In this process, Al aperture array was fabricated separately using the photolithography and reactive ion etching(RIE) process. Optical properties of the generated optical probes were measured and compared at Talbot distance from the aperture array having a diameter of $1{\mu}m$ and MLIAA.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2005.09a
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• pp.29-34
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• 2005

A optical head unit for nano optical probe away was developed. The optical probe array is generated by Talbot effect. The shape and thickness of microlens array(MLA) were designed to minimize the spot size at the foci of MLA. To increase the optical efficiency of the system and obtain the large tolerance for fabrication, aperture size was theoretically optimized. Then microlens illuminated aperture array(MLIAA) as an optical head unit was fabricated using a ultra violet(UV) molding process on aluminum aperture array. In this process, Al aperture array was fabricated separately using the photolithography and reactive ion etching(RIE) process. Optical properties of the generated optical probes were measured and compared at Talbot distance from the aperture array having a diameter of $1{\mu}m$ and MLIAA.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.572-575
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• 2005

A microlens connected to microfluidic channel is fabricated. The microlens is sealed with an elastomeric membrane which deforms by pressure of fluid driven by a syringe pump resulting in the shape change of the microlens. The optical properties of the microlens could be controlled by changing the microlens shape. The microlens system were made of an elastomer, PDMS, using molding from a photoplastic master patterned by UV photolithography. The test results show the optical property of the lens could be made into convex and concave type by applying the fluidic pressure positive and negative.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.79-84
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• 2005

To increase the tolerance for passive fiber alignment, a single mode polymer waveguide with a large core structure is demonstrated. The large core waveguide is designed to have a mode profile comparable to that of a thermally expanded core (TEC) fiber, and it can be connected to a high-contrast waveguide through an adiabatic transition taper structure. From a waveguide with a rectangular core of 25 ${\times}$ 25 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$$^2$, a single mode propagation is observed when the index contrast is as low as 0.0005. A UV-cured injection molding method is used to fabricate the thick core structure. Due to the large mode size, the insertion loss of the device is below 0.5 dB until the lateral displacement of the TEC fiber is 4.5 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$. The low insertion loss is important for reproducible passive alignment.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.9-15
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• 2022

In order to reduce the manufacturing costs of the glass lens, it is necessary to manufacture a lens using a UV curable resin or a thermosetting resin, which is a curable material, in order to replace a glass lens. In the case of forming a lens using a thermosetting material, it is necessary to form several lenses at once using the wafer-level lens manufacturing technologies due to the long curing time of the material. When a lens is manufactured using a curable material, an error in the shape of the lens due to the shrinkage of the material during the curing process is an important cause of defects. The major factors for these shape errors and deformations are the shrinkage and the change of mechanical properties in the process of changing from a liquid material during curing to a solid state after complete curing. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the curing process of the material and to examine the shrinkage rate and change of physical properties according to the degree cure. In addition, it is necessary to proceed with CAE for lens molding using these and to review problems in lens manufacturing in advance. In this study, the viscoelastic properties of the material were measured during the curing process using a rheometer. Using the results, Rheological investigation of cure kinetics was performed. At the same time, The shrinkage of the material was measured and simple mathematical models were created. And using the results, the molding process of a single lens was analyzed using Comsol, a commercial S/W. In addition, the experiment was conducted to compare and verify the CAE results. As a result, it was confirmed that the shrinkage rate of the material had a great influence on the shape precision of the final product.

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