• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.467-472
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• 1999

The isothermal cure behavior of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A(DGEBA) 4,4'-methylene dianiline(MDA) system with various contents of neopentyl glycol(NPG) has been analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry(DSC). TO increase the cure rate of DGEBA/MDA system, NPG was introduced as an accelerator. Regardless of the NPG content, the shape of the conversion curves showed sigmoid indication that DGEBA/MDA/NPG system followed autocatalytic cure reaction. The cure reaction of DGEBA/MDA system increased with the increment of NPG content and it was due to the catalytic role of hydroxyl groups of NPG.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.63 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2019

Because arsenic (As) is a chemical substance toxic to humans, there have been extensive investigations on the development of As detection methods. In this study, the electrochemical determination of As on nanoporous gold (NPG) electrodes was investigated using anodic stripping voltammetry. The electrochemical surface area of the NPG electrodes was controlled by changing the reaction times during the anodization of Au for NPG preparation, and its effect on the electrochemical behavior during As detection was examined. The detection efficiency of the NPG electrodes improved as the roughness factor of the NPG electrodes increased up to around 100. A further increase in the surface area of the NPG electrodes resulted in a decrease of the detection efficiency due to high background current levels. The most efficient As detection efficiency was obtained on the NPG electrodes prepared with an anodization time of 50 s. The effects of the detection parameters and of the Cu interference in As detection were investigated and the NPG electrode was compared to flat Au electrodes.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.179-186
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• 2021

Manipulation of complex objects with an anthropomorphic robot hand like a human hand is a challenge in the human-centric environment. In order to train the anthropomorphic robot hand which has a high degree of freedom (DoF), human demonstration augmented deep reinforcement learning policy optimization methods have been proposed. In this work, we first demonstrate augmentation of human demonstration in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is effective for object manipulation by comparing the performance of the augmentation-free Natural Policy Gradient (NPG) and Demonstration Augmented NPG (DA-NPG). Then three DRL policy optimization methods, namely NPG, Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), have been evaluated with DA (i.e., DA-NPG, DA-TRPO, and DA-PPO) and without DA by manipulating six objects such as apple, banana, bottle, light bulb, camera, and hammer. The results show that DA-NPG achieved the average success rate of 99.33% whereas NPG only achieved 60%. In addition, DA-NPG succeeded grasping all six objects while DA-TRPO and DA-PPO failed to grasp some objects and showed unstable performances.

• Mycobiology
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.429-439
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• 2018

To develop a convenient promoter analysis system for fungi, a null-pigment mutant (NPG) of Aspergillus nidulans was used with the 4'-phosphopantetheinyl transferase (PPTase) gene, npgA, which restores the normal pigmentation in A. nidulans, as a new reporter gene. The functional organization of serially deleted promoter regions of the A. nidulans trpC gene and the Cryphonectria parasitica crp gene in filamentous fungi was representatively investigated to establish a novel fungal promoter assay system that depends on color complementation of the NPG mutant with the PPTase npgA gene. Several promoter regions of the trpC and crp genes were fused to the npgA gene containing the 1,034-bp open reading frame and the 966-bp 3' downstream region from the TAA, and the constructed fusions were introduced into the NPG mutant in A. nidulans to evaluate color recovery due to the transcriptional activity of the sequence elements. Serial deletion of the trpC and crp promoter regions in this PPTase reporter assay system reaffirmed results in previous reports by using the fungal transformation step without a laborious verification process. This approach suggests a more rapid and convenient system than conventional analyses for fungal gene expression studies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.354.1-354.1
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• 2016

Nanoporous gold (NPG) is a very promising material in various fields such as sensor, actuator, and catalysis because of its high surface to volume ratio and conducting nature. In this study, we fabricated a NPG based amperometric sensor on a glass substrate by means of co-sputtering of Au and Si. During the sputtering process, we found the optimum conditions for heat treatment to reduce the residual stress and to improve adhesion between NPG films and the glass substrate. Subsequently, Si was selectively etched from Au-Si alloy by KOH solution, which forms nanoporous structures. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and auger electron spectroscopy (AES) were used to estimate the structure of NPG films and their composition. By employing appropriate heat treatments, we could make very stable NPG films. We tested the performance of NPG sensor with aniline molecules, which shows high sensitivity for sensing low concentration of aniline.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.6
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• pp.436-441
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• 2022

Because the nanoporous electrodes has large electrochemical surface areas, extensive studies have been focused on their fabrication methods. In this paper, a method for introducing a nanoporous gold (NPG) structure on the surface of an ultramicroelectrode (UME) using potentiostatic anodization was investigated. A well-defined NPG structure was introduced on the surface of the UME when a potential of 1.3 V was applied in 0.1 M phosphate buffer solution (pH 8) containing 1 M KCl. The anodic oxidation efficiency was investigated by observing the effect of the applied potential, the reaction time, and the size of the electrode on the roughness factor (R_f) of the prepared NPG-UMEs. In a short time of about 10 minutes, NPG-UME with a large R_f value of about 2000 could be prepared, which could be effectively used for electrochemical glucose detection. The results shown in this work are expected to have great applicability when performing electrochemical analysis with a small sample volume.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.163.2-163.2
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• 2010

We developed a simple method to synthesis a nitrogen doped graphene, nitrogen plasma treated graphene (NPG) sheets thought nitrogen plasma etching of graphene oxide (GO). X-ray photo electron spectroscopy (XPS) study of NPG sheets treated at various plasma conditions reveal that N-doping is classified to 3 kinds of binding configurations. The nitrogen doping concentration is at least 1.5 at % and up to 3 at% with changing of ratio of nitrogen configuration in NPG. Our group demonstrate ultracapacitor with high capacity and extremely durable using a NPG sheets that are comparable to pristine graphene supercapacitor, and pseudocapacitor using polymer and metal oxide with redox reaction, capacitance that are three-times higher, and a cycle life that are extremely stable. We also realized flexible capacitor by using the paper electrode that are coated by NPG sheets. NPG paper capacitor presented almost same performance compare with NPG on a metal substrate, and durability is much more enhanced than that. To additionally explain that how different kind of atoms in graphene layers can act as the ion absorption sites, we simulated the binding energy between nitrogen in graphene layer and ions in electrolyte. Increasing the energy density and long cycle life of ultracapacitor will enable them to compete with batteries and conventional capacitors in number of applications.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.45-50
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• 2004

To investigate the effect of the cell wall on the pigmentation and branching in Aspergillus nidulans, ultrastructure of cell wall in suppressor mutant of the null pigmentation (SU-NPG, SU602) has been examined. Scanning electron microgrphs (SEM) revealed that the most outer layer of conidia wall peeled off in SU-NPG on day 6 from the complete conidiation. They also showed that hyphal growth and branching were not well developed in SU-NPG. Transmission electron micrographs (TEM) showed that the plasma membrane was not crenulated and the hyphal wall was thick in SU-NPG. These results indicated that the ultrastructure of cell wall in SU-NPC might be modified. Cytochemical analysis showed that the cell wall in SU-NPG was differentiated into Cl, C3, C2 and C4 layer in conidia and H1, H3, H2 and H4 layer in hyphae. C3 layer and H3 layer existed in SU-NPG. The increment of the diameter in SU-NPG hyphae might be caused by the thickness of H3 layer. These results suggest that SU-NPG may have an immature but the differentiated structure for the pigmentation in cell wall.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.83-89
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• 2012

We investigate the electrocatalytic activities for oxygen reduction at nanoporous gold (NPG) surfaces fabricated by selective dissolution of Ag from electrodeposited Ag-Au layers on electrode surfaces. The structure of NPG was controlled by changing the concentration ratios of precursor metal complexes during the electrodeposition of Ag-Au layers and the corresponding surface morphology and surface area was examined. NPG structures with Ag/Au ratio of 2.0 exhibited the highest electrocatalytic activity for oxygen reduction, where the nanoporous structure plays a key role, but the surface area does not affect on the electrocatalytic activity. The mechanism of electroreduction of oxygen was investigated by rotating disk electrode techniques. In acidic media, oxygen was first reduced to hydrogen peroxide followed by further reduction to water through 2-step 4-electron mechanism, whereas the oxygen was reduced directly to water by 4-electron mechanism in basic media.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.589-598
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• 2000

In this study, various unsaturated polyester (UPE) resins were prepared from the condensation polymerization of mixtures of saturated (isophthalic acid : IPA) and unsaturated (maleic anhydride : MA) dibasic acids with propylene glycol (PG), neopentyl glycol (NPG). The critical surface tension (Υ$_{c}$) for the surface characteristics of a solid were estimated by Zisman plot, and the structure-property relationship was investigated by measuring the rheology of resins. The values of Υ$_{c}$ for glass of solid were 30.5 mNㆍm$^{-1}$ for UPE resin liquids. As the content of NPG in a PG/NPG glycol mixture increased, both the contact angle and the surface tension of the UPE resin liquids were found to decrease. The dynamic viscoelasticities of UPE resins with different glycol molar ratios were also measured. Shear rate dependence of viscosity and angular frequency dependence of storage, and loss modulus tended to decrease with increasing NPG content.