• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.741-750
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• 2016

Nanofibers(NFs), because of their high surface area and nanosized grains, have appropriate morphologies for use in chemiresistive-type sensors for gas detection applications. In this study, a highly sensitive and selective CO gas sensing material based on Au-decorated $SnO_2$ NFs was fabricated by electrospinning. $SnO_2$ NFs were synthesized by electrospinning and subsequently decorated with various amounts of Au nanoparticles(NPs) by sputtering; this was followed by thermal annealing. Different characterizations showed the successful formation of Au-decorated $SnO_2$ NFs. Gas sensing tests were performed on the fabricated sensors, which showed bell-shaped sensing behavior with respect to the amount of Au decoration. The best CO sensing performance, with a response of ~20 for 10 ppm CO, was obtained at an optimized amount of Au (2.6 at.%). The interplay between Au and $SnO_2$ in terms of the electronic and chemical sensitization by Au NPs is responsible for the great improvement in the CO sensing capability of pure $SnO_2$ NFs, suggesting that Au-decorated $SnO_2$ NFs can be a promising material for fabricating highly sensitive and selective chemiresistive-type CO gas sensors.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.3265-3268
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• 2012

Nanoparticles (NPs) are increasingly used in consumer products, which have aroused many concerns and debates regarding their fate in biological systems from a point of their safety/toxicity. Although a number of studies on the biological effects of NPs have been published, these are often complicated by the possible toxicity of conventional NPs, caused by contamination with chemical precursors or additives during their synthesis and/or purification procedures. To explicitly understand the toxicity basis of NPs, it is necessary to directly address a main problem related to their intrinsic/inherent toxicity and/or incompatibility with biological objects. The present study is designed to take advantage of a novel laser-assisted method called laser ablation to generate Ag, Au, Co, and Cu NPs in biocompatible aqueous solution, and to evaluate the toxicity of the resulting ultra-pure NPs. Our results show that the ultra-pure NPs with nascent surfaces possess moderate cytotoxicity to human cells in a cell-dependent manner.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.7-11
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• 2010

For many large-scale applications of high-temperature superconducting materials, large critical current density($J_c$) in high applied magnetic fields are required. A number of methods have been reported to introduce artificial pinning centers(APCs) in $YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-\delta}$(YBCO) films for enhancement of their $J_c$. In this work, we investigated electric characteristic of YBCO films on $SrTiO_3$ (100) substrates whose surfaces were modified by the introduction of Au nanoparticles (AuNPs). Au nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed on STO substrates with one of typical solution techniques, self assembled monolayer. After heating the STO substrates with Au nanoparticles, the size of Au nanoparticles was around 29~32 nm in height and 41~49 nm in diameter. XRD diffraction patterns taken on the YBCO film with Au nanoparticles show the c-axis orientation. The measured $T_c$ of YBCO /AuNPs films was around 89K and the $J_c$ was 0.75 MA/$cm^2$ at 65 K and 1 T.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.25.1-25.1
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• 2011

Over the past few decades, metallic nanoparticles (NPs) have been of great interest due to their unique mesoscopic properties which distinguish them from those of bulk metals; such as lowered melting points, greater versatility that allows for more ease of processability, and tunable optical and mechanical properties. Due to these unique properties, potential opportunities are seen for applications that incorporate nanomaterials into optical and electronic devices. Specifically, the development of metallic NPs has gained significant interest within the electronics field and technological community as a whole. In this study, gold (Au) pads for surface finish in electronic package were developed by inkjet printing of Au NPs. The microstructures of inkjet-printed Au film were investigated by various thermal treatment conditions. The film showed the grain growth as well as bonding between NPs. The film became denser with pore elimination when NPs were sintered under gas flows of $N_2$-bubbled through formic acid ($FA/N_2$) and $N_2$, which resulted in improvement of electrical conductance. The resistivity of film was 4.79 ${\mu}{\Omega}$-cm, about twice of bulk value. From organic anlayses of FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, and TGA, the amount of organic residue in the film was 0.43% which meant considerable removal of the solvent or organic capping molecules. The solder ball shear test was adopted for solderability and shear strength value was 820 gf (1 gf=9.81 mN) on average. This shear strength is good enough to substitute the inkjet-printed Au nanoparticulate film for electroplating in electronic package.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.390-390
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• 2011

The size distribution of gold nanoparticles (NPs) is an important factor in their application to various fields of nanotechnology such as nanodevice fabrication, nanobio measurements, medical diagnosis, and so on, since the properties of nanoparticles depend on the size. As the pH of the reaction mixture was increased, the size distribution of gold NPs synthesized via sodium citrate reduction method was getting narrower and it finally became quite mono-dispersive when the pH was higher than ca. 7. 0.1M NaOH solution was used in controlling the pH, while the ratio between sodium citrate and HAuCl4 was fixed to 3:1 whose initial pH was about 5. Scanning and tunneling electron microscopy and UV/Vis spectrometry were used to characterize the resulting Au NPs. The change of the size distribution of the NPs was discussed with the change of the reaction rate related to the change of hydroxyl ion concentration.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.375.1-375.1
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• 2016

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has revolutionized genetics and become one of the most popular techniques in modern biological and medical sciences. It can be used not only as an in vitro DNA amplification method but also used in many bioassay applications. The PCR can be used to exponentially produce a large number of DNA copies from a small quantity of DNA molecules in a few hours. However, as unwanted DNA fragments are also often manufactured, the amplification efficiency of PCR is decreased. To overcome this limitation, several nanomaterials have been employed to increase the specificity of the PCR reaction. Recently, graphene has attracted a great interest for its excellent electron transfer, thermal and biocompatibility. Especially, gold nanoparticle-coated graphene oxide (GO/AuNPs) led to enhance electron and thermal transfer rate and low-charge transfer resistance. Therefore, we report the development of a demonstration for the PCR efficiency using a large-scale production of the GO and combination of gold nanoparticles. Because a thermal conductivity is an important factor for improving the PCR efficiency in different DNA polymerases and different size samples. When PCR use GO/AuNPs, the result of transmission electron microscopy and real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) showed an enhanced PCR efficiency. We have demonstrated that GO/AuNPs would be simply outperformed for enhancing the specificity and efficiency of DNA amplification procedure.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.440-440
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• 2011

We report on the non-volatile memory characteristics of a bistable organic memory (BOM) device with Au nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in a conducting poly N-vinylcarbazole (PVK) colloids hybrid layer deposited on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images show the Au nanoparticles distributed isotropically around the surface of a PVK colloid. The average induced charge on Au nanoparticles, estimated using the C-V hysteresis curve, was large, as much as 5 holes/NP at a sweeping voltage of ${\pm}3$ V. The maximum ON/OFF ratio of the current bistability in the BOM devices was as large as $1{\times}105$. The cycling endurance tests of the ON/OFF switching exhibited a high endurance of above $1.5{\times}105$ cycles and a high ON/OFF ratio of ~105 could be achieved consistently even after quite a long retention time of more than $1{\times}106$ s.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.30-34
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• 2014

We report a novel approach for fabricating active surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate for sensitive detection. This approach is based on the assembling of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) onto the electrospun polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofiber film. The hydrophobic surface of PCL nanofiber film was pretreated using UV-inducing graft polymerization with acrylic acid. Afterwards this PCL nanofiber film was incubated with the AuNP solution to promote the assembly of AuNPs onto the PCL nanofibers and the formation of SERS active substrate. 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP) molecule was used as a test probe for SERS experiments, indicating that the substrate has high sensitivity to SERS response. Our method has great advantage in term of environment-friendly synthesis, large-scale, high stability and good reproducibility. This highly active SERS substrate can be employed to detect the drug molecule, 2-thiouracil.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.483-487
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether gold nanoparticles had radiosensitization when combined with gamma and x ray beam. Cytotoxicity was mearsured with comparing survival fraction after incubated time 6,12,18 and 24 hours. Clonogenic assay was employed to assess survival fraction of cells with and without gold nanoparticles treatment following gamma ray irradiation. The most of gold nanoparticles were distributed in the cytoplasm. And the toxicity of gold nanoparticles used this study were found to be non-cytotoxic. And we also observed enhancement by about 40% in RBE value for gamma ray irradiation of cells treated with gold nanoparticles. Dose reduction of about half for gamma ray irradiation is demonstrated for gold nanoparticles treated cells as compared to untreated cells. In cells with exposed to gamma ray, DNA damage was increased when compared to only radiation exposed cells. The study revealed a significant reduction in radiation dose for killing the cells with internalized gold nanoparticles as compared to the cells without gold nanoparticles. The gold nanoparticles treatment resulted in enhancement of radiation effect as evident from increase in relative biological effectiveness values for photon irradiated cells.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.262-267
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• 2016

In this study, we present an excellent approach for easily and uniformly immobilizing Pt, Au and bimetallic PtAu nanoparticles (NPs) on a multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWNT)-coated layer through dry plasma reduction. The NPs are stably and uniformly immobilized on the surface of MWNTs and the nanohybrid materials are applied to counter electrode (CE) of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The electrochemical properties of CEs are examined through cyclic voltammogram, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and Tafel measurements. As a result, both electrochemical catalytic activity and electrical conductivity are highest for PtAu/MWNT electrode. The DSC employing PtAu/MWNT CE exhibits power conversion efficiency of 7.9%. The efficiency is better than those of devices with MWNT (2.6%), AuNP/MWNT (2.7%) and PtNP/MWNT (7.5%) CEs.