• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.82-86
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• 2012

A sensitive eight-channel high-Tc Superconducting Interference Device (SQUID) detection system for magnetic contaminant in a lithium ion battery anode was developed. Finding ultra-small metallic foreign matter is an important issue for a manufacturer because metallic contaminants carry the risk of an internal short. When contamination occurs, the manufacturer of the product suffers a great loss from recalling the tainted product. Metallic particles with outer dimensions smaller than 100 microns cannot be detected using a conventional X-ray imaging system. Therefore, a highly sensitive detection system for small foreign matter is required. We have already developed a detection system based on a single-channel SQUID gradiometer and horizontal magnetization. For practical use, the detection width of the system should be increased to at least 65 mm by employing multiple sensors. In this paper, we present an 8-ch high-Tc SQUID roll-to-roll system for inspecting a lithium-ion battery anode with a width of 65 mm. A special microscopic type of a cryostat was developed upon which eight SQUID gradiometers were mounted. As a result, small iron particles of 35 microns on a real lithium-ion battery anode with a width of 70 mm were successfully detected. This system is practical for the detection of contaminants in a lithium ion battery anode sheet.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.19-23
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• 2004

YBCO do superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometers based on bicrystal Josephson junctions on 10 mm ${\times}$ 10 mm $SrTiO_3$ substrates have been fabricated. The pickup coil of the device was designed to have 16 parallel loops with 50-fm-wide lines. We could obtain optimised direct coupled YBCO SQUID magnetometer design with field sensitivity $B_{N}$ $\Phi$/ of $4.5 nT/\Phi_{0}$ and magnetic field noise $B_{N}$ of about $22 fT/Hz^{1}$2/ with an I/f corner frequency of 2 Hz measured inside a magnetically shielded room. Preliminary results of magnetocardiograph measurement using the HTS SQUID magnetometers show signal to noise ratio of about 110, which is comparable to the quality of a commercial MCG system based on Nb-SQUIDs.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• v.10
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• pp.151-154
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• 2000

We have developed a YBCO SQUID gradiometer system for the measurement of a very weak magnetic field in an unshielded environment. The system consists of a SQUID gradiometer sensor, low noise pre-amp, and FLL(fluxlocked loop) control electronics. The gradiometer sensors have been fabricated on STO bicrystal substrates, and exhibit a magnetic noise of 300 fT/${\surd}$ Hz/cm at 100 Hz. The overall magnetic field noise of the SQUID gradiometer system was about 10 pT/${\surd}$ Hz/cm at 10 Hz without any magnetic shield. The system demonstrated a high stability for a long time, and real-time measurement resolution ${\le}$ 100 pT/cm in the unshielded environments.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2007

As very sensitive magnetic field sensors, superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) are used to measure magnetic field signals from the human heart. By analyzing these cardiomagnetic signals, functional diagnoses of heart can be done. In order to measure weak biomagnetic signals, we need a multichannel SQUID array with sensor coverage large enough to cover the whole heart to enable the measurement in a single position setting. In this paper, we review the recent development of SQUID systems for measuring cardiomagnetic fields, with special emphasis on SQUID types.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.98-104
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• 2004

We analyzed a noise-sensitivity profile of a specific SQUID sensor system for the localization of brain activity. The location of a neuromagnetic current source is estimated from the recording of spatially distributed SQUID sensors. According to the specific arrangement of the sensors, each site in the source space has different sensitivity, that is, the difference in the lead field vectors. Conversely, channel noises on each sensor will give a different amount of the estimation error to each of the source sites. e.g., a distant source site from the sensor system has a small lead-field vector in magnitude and low sensitivity. However, when we solve the inverse problem from the recorded sensor data, we use the inverse of the lead-field vector that is rather large, which results in an overestimated noise power on the site. Especially, the spatial sensitivity profile of a gradiometer system measuring tangential fields is much more complex than a radial magnetometer system. This is one of the causes to make the solutions of inverse problems unstable on intervening of the sensor noise. In this study, in order to improve the localization accuracy, we calculated the noise-sensitivity profile of our 40-channel planar SQUID gradiometer system, and applied it as a normalization weight factor to the source localization using synthetic aperture magnetometry.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.258-264
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• 1997

$YBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{7}$ single layer dc SQUID magnetometers, prepared on $1\;cm^{2}\;SrTiO_{3}$ substrates, have been fabricated and characterized. Based on the analytical description, a SQUID magnetometer design having a 8.5 mm pickup coil with 2.6 mm linewidth, and a SQUID inductance Ls = 50 pH with $3\;{\mu}m$ Josephson junctions is presented. The devices showed a maximum modulation voltage depth of $65\;{\mu}V$ and a magnetic field noise of 0.6 pT /$\sqrt{Hz}$ at 1 Hz. Clear traces of human magnetocardiogram could be obtained with the SQUID magnetometer operating at 77 K.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.110-113
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• 2004

We have designed and fabricated the YBCO single layer directly-coupled SQUID magnetometers for the purpose of magnetocardiography in a magnetically disturbed environment. The SQUID magnetometers were designed three different types of pickup coil such as solid type, PL type I and PL type II for further stable fluxed-locked-loop operation without magnetic shielding. Magnetometer was fabricated with a single layer YBCO thin film deposited on STO(100) bicrystal substrate with misorientation angle of $30^{\circ}$. We have achieved a magnetic field noise BN of 30 fT/$Hz^{1/2}$ at 100 Hz, and less than 70 fT/$Hz^{1/2}$ at 1 Hz. The PL type II SQUIDs have exhibited the most stable fluxed-locked-loop operation in a magnetically unshielded environment.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.152-157
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• 2007

Uniaxial square Helmholtz coils for testing SQUID sensors were designed and their field distributions were calculated. Optimum parameters for maximizing the uniform region in the Helmholtz mode were obtained for different uniformity tolerances. The coil system consists of 2 pairs of identical square loops, a Helmholtz pair for generating uniform fields and the other for the 2nd-order gradient fields in combination with the Helmholtz pair. Full expressions of the axial component of the field were calculated by using Biot-Savart's law. To understand the behavior of the field near the coil center, analytical expressions were obtained up to the 4th-order in the midplane and along the coil axis. The Helmholtz condition for generating uniform fields was calculated to be $d/{\alpha}=0.544505643$, where 2d is the inter-coil distance and $2{\alpha}$ is the side length of the coil square. Maximized uniform range can be obtained for a given nonuniformity tolerance by choosing $d/{\alpha}$ slightly lower than the Helmholtz condition. The pure second-order gradient field can be generated by subtracting the Helmholtz field from the field of the 2nd pair with equal magnitudes of the center fields of the two pairs. The coil system is useful for testing balance and sensitivity of SQUID gradiometers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.444-447
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• 2004

A heart diagnosis system adopts hundreds of Superconducting Quantum Interface Device(SQUID) sensors for precision MCG(Magnetocardiogram) or MEG(Magnetoencephalogram) signal acquisitions. This system requires correct and real-time data acquisition from the sensors in a required sampling interval, i.e., 1 mili-second. This paper presents our hardware design and test results, to acquire data from 256 channel analog signal with 1-ksample/sec speed, using 12-bit 8-channel ADC devices, SPI interfaces, parallel interfaces, and 8-bit microprocessors. We chose to implement parallel data transfer between microprocessors as an effective way of achieving such data collection. Our result concludes that the data collection can be done in 250 ${\mu}sec$ time-interval.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• v.14
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• pp.20-20
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• 2004