• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.738-745
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• 2015

The catalytic exchange of hydrogen isotopes between hydrogen and water has been known to be a very useful process for the separation of tritium from tritiated water. For the process, a highly active hydrophobic catalyst is needed. This study provides an effective fabrication method of size-controlled platinum/poly[styrene-divinylbenzene-tri(propylene glycol) diacrylate] [Pt/poly(SDB-TPGDA)] hydrophobic catalyst beads with a narrow size distribution. Platinum nanoparticles were prepared by ${\gamma}$-ray-induced reduction in the aqueous phase first, and then uniformly dispersed in SDB-TPGDA comonomer after the hydrophobization of platinum nanoparticles with alkylamine stabilizers. The porous Pt/poly(SDB-TPGDA) hydrophobic catalyst beads were synthesized by the UV-initiated polymerization of the mixture droplets prepared in a capillary-based microfluidic system. The size of as-prepared catalyst beads can be controlled in the range of $200-1,000{\mu}m$ by adjusting the flow rate of dispersed and continuous phases, as well as the viscosity of the continuous phase. Sorbitan monooleate and cyclohexanol were used as coporogens to control the porosities of the catalyst beads.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.51 no.9
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• pp.449-454
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• 2002

A rectangular straight microchannel, integrated with the resistance temperature detectors(RTDs) for temperature sensing and a micro-heater for generating the Temperature gradient along the channel, was fabricated. Its dimension is 57${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$(H)$\times$200${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$(W)$\times$48,050${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$(L), and RTDs were placed at the inner-channel wall. Si wafer was used as a substrate. For the fabrication of RTDs, 5300$\AA$ thick Pt/Ti layer was sputtered on a Pyrex glass wafer. Finally, the glass wafer was bonded with Si wafer by anodic bonding, so that the RTDs are located inside the microchannel. Temperature coefficient of resistance(TCR) values of the fabricated Pt-RTDs were 2800~2950ppm$^{\circ}C$ and the variation of TCR value In the range of O~10$0^{\circ}C$ was less than 0.3％. Therefore, it was proved that the fabricated Pt-RTDs without annealing were excellent as temperature sensors. The temperature distribution in the microchannel was investigated as a function of mass flow rate and heating power. The temperature increase rate diminished with decreasing the applied power and increasing the mass flow rate. It was confirmed from the comparison with the simulation results that the temperature measured inside the microchannel is more accurate than measuring the temperature measured at the outer wall. The proposed temperature sensing method and microchannel are expected to be useful in microfluidics researches.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.277.1-277.1
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• 2013

Molecular diagnostics consists of three processes, which are a sample pretreatment, a nucleic acid amplification, and an amplicon detection. Among three components, sample pretreatment is an important process in that it can increase the limit of detection by purifying nucleic acid in biological sample from contaminants that may interfere with the downstream genetic analysis such as nucleic acid amplification and detection. To achieve point-of-care virus detection system, the sample pretreatment process needs to be simple, rapid, and automatic. However, the commercial RNA extraction kits such as Rneasy (Qiagen) or MagnaPure (Roche) kit are highly labor-intensive and time-consuming due to numerous manual steps, and so it is not adequate for the on-site sample preparation. Herein, we have developed a rotary microfluidic system to extract and purify the RNA without necessity of external mechanical syringe pumps to allow flow control using microfluidic technology. We designed three reservoirs for sample, washing buffer, and elution buffer which were connected with different dimensional microfluidic channels. By controlling RPM, we could dispense a RNA sample solution, a washing buffer, and an elution buffer successively, so that the RNA was captured in the sol-gel solid phase, purified, and eluted in the downstream. Such a novel rotary sample preparation system eliminates some complicated hardwares and human intervention providing the opportunity to construct a fully integrated genetic analysis microsystem.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.38 no.12
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• pp.1035-1042
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• 2014

Reducing the friction of engine parts is an important issue in engine design. The loss of energy in the piston assembly due to mechanical friction ranges from 40 to 55%, and there is an increase in the total energy of about 5% if the friction of the piston can be removed. In order to reduce the friction loss at the level of each engine part, it is necessary to perform a comparative analysis with other engines to determine the important factors affecting the energy loss. Several studies have been performed to analyze the lubrication based on hydrodynamic modeling, since a piston lubrication system has dimensions in the nanoscale to microscale domain. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the correlations between the molecular and continuum systems. In this study, we investigated the friction changes due to the various interactions between molecules in the wall/fluid interface, where a microscopic movement of the oil film occurs along the cylinder liner of the engine.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.238-242
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• 2005

In this work, Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and SU-8 (Microchem, USA) photoresist were used to make the microchannel by soft lithographic method. To investigate the effects of external voltages and widths of the microchannel, we made the microchannel by soft lithographic method. To investigate the effects of external voltages and widths of the microchannel, we made the microchannel with various widths: $100{\mu}m,\;200{\mu}m$ and $300{\mu}m$. And each micorchannel was supplied with external voltage, respectively. As a result, the fluid velocity increased with an increase of the external voltage at the same width. It was speculated that the electrical double layer was condensed and the zeta potential increased with increase of the external voltage. The fluid velocity increased with the microchannel width increase at the same external voltage. It is concluded that the resistance in the microchannel decreased as the microchannel width increased.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.58-64
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• 2019

This study presents a novel method for preparing monodisperse polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) microparticles in a dispensing needle based microfluidic device. The microfluidic devices are manufactured by manually assembling various off-the-shelf products without using additional equipment. In this microfluidic device, the volumetric flow rates of the dispersed phase of PEGDA solution and the continuous phase of oil are controlled to generate monodisperse PEGDA droplets. The PEGDA droplet contains photo-initiator thus it is crosslinked to microparticle by photopolymerization at the ends of the device. The particle size is easily controlled by adjusting the volume flow rate and the size of the microfluidic device. The monodispersity of the particles is calculated by a coefficient of variation of 2.57%. To demonstrate the biological applications of PEGDA particles, cells are encapsulated and observed for proliferation and viability.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2019

The use of electrokinetic dissipation method to study the fluid flow law in micro-pores is of great significance to reservoir rock microfluidics. In this paper, the micro-capillary theory was combined with the coupling model of the seepage field and the current field under the excitation of the harmonic signal, and the coupling theory of the electrokinetic effect under the first-order approximation condition was derived. The dissipation equation of electrokinetic dissipation and viscous resistance dissipation and its solution were established by using Green's function method. The physical and mathematical models for the electrokinetic dissipation of reservoir rocks were constructed. The microscopic mechanism of the electrokinetic dissipation of reservoir rock were theoretically clarified. The influencing factors of the electrokinetic dissipation frequency of the reservoir rock were analyzed quantitatively. The results show that the electrokinetic effect transforms the fluid flow profile in the pores of the reservoir from parabolic to wavy; under low-frequency conditions, the apparent viscosity coefficient is greater that one and is basically unchanged. The apparent viscosity coefficient gradually approaches 1 as the frequency increases further. The viscous resistance dissipation is two orders of magnitude higher than the electrokinetic effect dissipation. When the concentration of the electrolyte exceeds 0.1mol/L, the electrokinetic dissipation can be neglected, while for the electrolyte solution (<$10^{-2}M$) in low concentration, the electrokinetic dissipation is very significant and cannot be ignored.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.639-643
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• 2021

In this study, fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) nanoparticle as an adhesive for fabricating a three-dimensional multilayered microfluidic device was studied. The formation of evenly distributed FEP nanoparticles layer with 3 ㎛ in thickness on substrates was achieved by simple spin coating of FEP dispersion solution at 1500 rpm for 30 s. It is confirmed that FEP nanoparticles transformed into a hydrophobic thin film after thermal treatment at 300 ℃ for 1 hour, and fabricated polyimide film-based microfluidic device using FEP nanoparticle was endured pressure up to 2250 psi. Finally, a three-dimensional multilayered microfluidic device composed of 16 microreactors, which are difficult to fabricate with conventional photolithography, was successfully realized by simple one-step alignment of FEP coated nine polyimide films. The developed three-dimensional multilayered microfluidic device has the potential to be a powerful tool such as high-throughput screening, mass production, parallelization, and large-scale microfluidic integration for various applications in chemistry and biology.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.139-144
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• 2022

This study reports a microfluidic approach to produce monodisperse hydrogel microparticles in a simple and highly efficient manner. Specifically, we produce double emulsion drops with a thin oil shell surrounding an aqueous prepolymer solution, which is solidified via UV-induced free radical polymerization. When they are dispersed in an aqueous solution, the oil shell is dewetted due to the absence of surfactants, resulting in production of highly uniform hydrogel microparticles (C.V.=1%). Results show that production of monodisperse hydrogel microparticles with controllable size and composition can be achieved with minimal use of oil unlike water-in-oil (w/o) single emulsion-based approach. Furthermore, in-depth study of flow patterns in microfluidic device using a phase diagram exhibits a crucial relationship among relative flow rates while providing windows of readily controllable parameters for reliable manufacturing of hydrogel microparticles.

• Journal of Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Probes
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.95-101
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• 2022

Microfluidic radioimmunoassay (RIA) platform called µ-RIA spends less reagent and shorter reaction time for the analysis compared to the conventional tube-based radioimmunoassay. This study reported the design of µ-RIA chips optimized for the gamma counter which could measure the small samples of radioactive materials automatically. Compared with the previous study, the µ-RIA chips developed in this study were designed to be compatible with conventional RIA test tubes. And, the automatic gamma counter could detect radioactivity from the ¹²⁵I labeled anti-PSA attached to the chips. Effects of the multi-layer microchannels and two-phase flow in the µ-RIA chips were investigated in this study. The measured radioactivity from the ¹²⁵I labeled anti-PSA was linearly proportional to the number of stacked chips, representing that the radioactivity in µ-RIA platform could be amplified by designing the chips with multi-layers. In addition, we designed µ-RIA chip to generate liquid-gas plug flow inside the microfluidic channel. The plug flow can promote binding of the biomolecules onto the microfluidic channel surface with recirculation in the liquid phase. The ratio of liquid slug and air slug length was 1 : 1 when the ¹²⁵I labeled anti-PSA and the air were injected at 1 and 35 µL/min, respectively, exhibiting 1.6 times higher biomolecule attachment compared to the microfluidic chip without the air injection. This experimental result indicated that the biomolecular reaction was improved by generating liquid-gas slugs inside the microfluidic channel. In this study, we presented a novel µ-RIA chips that is compatible with the conventional gamma counter with automated sampler. Therefore, high-throughput radioimmunoassay can be carried out by the automatic measurement of radioactivity with reduced radiowaste generation. We expect the µ-RIA platform can successfully replace conventional tube-based radioimmunoassay in the future.