• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.97-101
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• 2002

Recently, the need for transporting and manipulating minute amount of fluids in microscale channels (so-called micro-fluidics) has been increasing, especially in biotechnology and biochemical processing. This work demonstrates that the so-called mechano-chemical process which consists of mechanical abrasive action combined with chemical process can be used to f뮤ricate micro-fluidic channels more rapidly and cost effectively than other methods. In this work, capillary filling of fluids in micro-channels was investigated by theoretical approaches and experiments. From the experimental results, it is expected that a complex micro-fluidic system can be fabricated using the micro-fabrication technique and microsystem packaging method described in this work.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.87-93
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• 2004

Recently, with the development of bio-technology the interests in the micro-fluidic devices for analysis in the fields of biology and medical science have been steadily increasing. Although polymer is considered as one of the best materials for micro-fluidic devices. glass or silicon molds fabricated by photo-lithographic technique have been commonly used. However, it is generally perceived that the conventional photolithographic technique has the limitation for fabricating micro-channels for micro-fluidic devices. In this work, the possibility of fabrication of micro-fluidic channels on PDMS by using the mechano-chemical process and the effect of surface states on the fluid flow were investigated. Experimental results revealed that PDMS mold fabricated by the mechano-chemical process could be used effectively to replicate micro-fluidic channels with high reproducibility and dimensional accuracy. It was also found that the fluid flow generation and flow speed were largely affected by the hydrophilicity and the surface roughness of the micro-channel surfaces.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.759-760
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• 2007

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.603-607
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• 2002

Recently, the need leer transporting and manipulating minute amount of fluids in microscale channels (so-called micro-fluidics) has been increasing, especially in biotechnology and biochemical processing. This work demonstrates that the mechano-chemical process which consists of mechanical abrasive action combined with chemical process can be used to fabricate micro-fluidic channels more rapidly and cost effectively than other methods. In this work, capillary filling of fluids in micro-channels was investigated by theoretical approaches and experiments. From the experimental results, it is expected that a complex micro-fluidic system can be fabricated using the micro- fabrication technique and microsystem packaging method described in this work.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.31 no.9
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• pp.910-914
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• 2007

We present a simple and an inexpensive method for the fabrication of a nano-fluidic filter and a nano-pore micromixer using self-assembly of nano-spheres and surface tension. Colloid-plug was formed by surface tension of liquid in a microchannel to fabricate nanofluidic filter. When colloid is evaporated, nano-spheres in a colloid are orderly stacked by a capillary force. Orderly stacked nano-spheres form 3-D nano-mesh which can be used as a mesh structure of a fluidic filter. We used silica nano-sphere whose diameter is $567{\pm}85nm$, and silicon micro-channel of $50{\mu}m$-diameter. Fabricated nano-fluidic filter in a micro-channel has median pore diameter of 158nm which was in agreement with expected diameter of the nano-pore of $128{\pm}19nm$. A nano-pore micromixer consists of $200\;{\mu}m-wide,\;100\;{\mu}m-deep$ micro-channel and self-assembled nano-spheres. In the nano-pore micromixer, two different fluids had no sooner met together than two fluids begin to mix at wide region. From the experimental study, we completely apply self-assembly of nano-spheres to nano-fluidic devices.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.188-195
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• 2004

In this paper, we fabricated fluidic devices like micro-channel, pump, mixer and particular gas separator with the technology of stereolithouaphy using RP(rapid-prototyping). The fabricated fluidic devices are expected to be applied to develop Lab-on-a chip type liquid analyzer. Stereolithography technology seems effective for fabricating MEMS(Micro Electro Mechanical System) with complicated structure because it makes three dimensional fabrication possible but, exclusive devices are needed to be developed fur fabricating even more microscopic MEMS structure.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07c
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• pp.1924-1926
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• 2001

A novel wet release process ($\mu$ CARP - Micro Channel Assisted Release Process) for releasing an extreme large-area plate structure without etching hole is proposed and experimented. Etching holes in conventional process reduce a effective area and degrade an optical characteristics by a diffraction. In addition, as the area of a released structure increases, the stietion becomes more serious. The proposed process resolves these problems by the introduction of a micro fluidic channel beneath the structure which will be released. In this paper, a 5 mm${\times}$5mm-single crystal silicon plate structure was released by the proposed $\mu$CARP without etch holes on the structure. The variation in etching time with respect to the of the introduced micro channel is also examined. This process is expected to be beneficial for the actuator of a nano-scale data storage and the scanning mirror.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2004

A micro-fluidic oscillator is used to control a linear actuator in a dynamic microsystem. The pressure difference at its two output ports causes the linear actuator to move, and it is a standard of judging the performance of the oscillator. The performance can be improved by optimizing the geometry of the oscillator, which has to enable fluid jet to switch at low inlet velocity. For this, in this study the relationship between the pressure coefficient (difference) and geometric parameters is obtained through the analysis using the software FLUENT. From the results the optimized model that maximize the output pressure difference is obtained by using a cyclic coordinate method that is one of optimization methods. As a result not only the performance is improved, but also the working range is more widen.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.234-237
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• 2011

This paper presents a study into pH Indicator-Embedded hydrogel micro-particles which are encoded various shapes according to the captured indicator. We incorporate various pH indicators into a photo-curable hydrogel, PEG-DA(Poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate). Using the latest fluidic lithography techniques, we can easily fabricate variously patterned hydrogel particles based on in-situ photopolymerization of the PEG-DA in a micro-fluidic channel. The shape of the particle is related to the pH indicator inside the particle. We demonstrate that the micro pH sensors change their colors according to the pH levels. The micro pH sensors have various characteristics that are related to the curing time, particle size, etc. By changing these conditions, we can adjust the long term stability and reaction time of the hybrid micro pH sensors.