• Molecules and Cells
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.76-83
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• 2022

Neurons-on-a-Chip technology has been developed to provide diverse in vitro neuro-tools to study neuritogenesis, synaptogensis, axon guidance, and network dynamics. The two core enabling technologies are soft-lithography and microelectrode array technology. Soft lithography technology made it possible to fabricate microstamps and microfluidic channel devices with a simple replica molding method in a biological laboratory and innovatively reduced the turn-around time from assay design to chip fabrication, facilitating various experimental designs. To control nerve cell behaviors at the single cell level via chemical cues, surface biofunctionalization methods and micropatterning techniques were developed. Microelectrode chip technology, which provides a functional readout by measuring the electrophysiological signals from individual neurons, has become a popular platform to investigate neural information processing in networks. Due to these key advances, it is possible to study the relationship between the network structure and functions, and they have opened a new era of neurobiology and will become standard tools in the near future.

• Proceedings of the International Microelectronics And Packaging Society Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.9-15
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• 2000

Flip chip assembly on organic substrates using ACAs have received much attentions due to many advantages such as easier processing, good electrical performance, lower cost, and low temperature processing compatible with organic substrates. ACAs are generally composed of epoxy polymer resin and small amount of conductive fillers (less than 10 wt. %). As a result, ACAs have almost the same CTE values as an epoxy material itself which are higher than conventional underfill materials which contains lots of fillers. Therefore, it is necessary to lower the CTE value of ACAs to obtain more reliable flip chip assembly on organic substrates using ACAs. To modify the ACA composite materials with some amount of conductive fillers, non-conductive fillers were incorporated into ACAs. In this paper, we investigated the effect of fillers on the thermo-mechanical properties of modified ACA composite materials and the reliability of flip chip assembly on organic substrates using modified ACA composite materials. For the characterization of modified ACAs composites with different content of non-conducting fillers, dynamic scanning calorimeter (DSC), and thermo-gravimetric analyzer (TGA), dynamic mechanical analyzer (DMA), and thermo-mechanical analyzer (TMA) were utilized. As the non-conducting filler content increased, CTE values decreased and storage modulus at room temperature increased. In addition, the increase in tile content of filler brought about the increase of Tg$^{DSC}$ and Tg$^{TMA}$. However, the TGA behaviors stayed almost the same. Contact resistance changes were measured during reliability tests such as thermal cycling, high humidity and temperature, and high temperature at dry condition. It was observed that reliability results were significant affected by CTEs of ACA materials especially at the thermal cycling test. Results showed that flip chip assembly using modified ACA composites with lower CTEs and higher modulus by loading non-conducting fillers exhibited better contact resistance behavior than conventional ACAs without non-conducting fillers.ers.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-49
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• 2000

Flip chip assembly on organic substrates using ACAs have received much attentions due to many advantages such as easier processing, good electrical performance, lower cost, and low temperature processing compatible with organic substrates. ACAs are generally composed of epoxy polymer resin and small amount of conductive fillers (less than 10 wt.%). As a result, ACAs have almost the same CTE values as an epoxy material itself which are higher than conventional underfill materials which contains lots of fillers. Therefore, it is necessary to lower the CTE value of ACAs to obtain more reliable flip chip assembly on organic substrates using ACAs. To modify the ACA composite materials with some amount of conductive fillers, non-conductive fillers were incorporated into ACAs. In this paper, we investigated the effect of fillers on the thermo-mechanical properties of modified ACA composite materials and the reliability of flip chip assembly on organic substrates using modified ACA composite materials. For the characterization of modified ACAs composites with different content of non-conducting fillers, dynamic scanning calorimeter (DSC), and thermo-gravimetric analyser (TGA), dynamic mechanical analyzer (DMA), and thermo-mechanical analyzer (TMA) were utilized. As the non-conducting filler content increased, CTE values decreased and storage modulus at room temperature increased. In addition, the increase in the content of filler brought about the increase of $Tg^{DSC}$ and $Tg^{TMA}$. However, the TGA behaviors stayed almost the same. Contact resistance changes were measured during reliability tests such as thermal cycling, high humidity and temperature, and high temperature at dry condition. It was observed that reliability results were significantly affected by CTEs of ACA materials especially at the thermal cycling test. Results showed that flip chip assembly using modified ACA composites with lower CTEs and higher modulus by loading non-conducting fillers exhibited better contact resistance behavior than conventional ACAs without non-conducting fillers.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.28 no.8C
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• pp.803-810
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• 2003

This paper addresses an image processing technique for the human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA chip to discriminate whether the probes are hybridized with the target DNA. HPV DNA chip is designed to determine HPV gene-types by using DNA probes for 22 HPV types. In addition to the probes, the HPV DNA chip has markers that always react with the sample DNA. The positions of probe-dots in the final scanned image are fixed relative to the marker- dot locations with a small variation attributable to the accuracy of the dotter and the scanner. The probes are quadruplicated to enhance diagnostic fidelity. frier knowledge including the marker relative distance and the replication information of probes is integrated into the template matching technique with normalized covariance measure. It was demonstrated that the employment of both of the prior knowledges can be accomplished by simply averaging the template matching measures over the positions of the markers and probes. The resulting proposed scheme yields stable marker locating and probe classification.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2022.10a
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• pp.459-461
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• 2022

One of the big differences between Network-on-Chip (NoC) and the existing parallel processing system based on an off-chip network is that data packet routing is performed using a centralized control scheme. In such an environment, the best-effort packet routing problem becomes a real-time assignment problem in which data packet arriving time and processing time is the cost. In this paper, the Hungarian algorithm, a representative computational complexity reduction algorithm for the linear algebraic equation of the allocation problem, is implemented in the form of a hardware accelerator. As a result of logic synthesis using the TSMC 0.18um standard cell library, the area of the circuit designed through case analysis for the cost distribution is reduced by about 16% and the propagation delay of it is reduced by about 52%, compared to the circuit implementing the original operation sequence of the Hungarian algorithm.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.46-51
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• 2024

Drone was first used for military purposes but as the range of use has recently expanded. It is being widely used in various industrial fields such as agriculture, service, logistics, and leisure. Lithium polymer batteries are lightweight and highly efficient, so they are mainly used as power supplies for drones. Accordingly, the need for lightweight and high energy density lithium polymer batteries has increased in order to supply stable power to drone. However, lithium polymer batteries can lead to ignition and explosion due to overcharging, short circuit, etc., so they must be used with a protective circuit installed. The protection circuit consists of a protection IC that monitors the voltage of the lithium polymer battery and a dual N-channel MOSFET that acts as a switch in case of overcharge and overdischarge. Therefore, this paper was implemented in one package form using a battery protection IC and a MOSFET semiconductor die chip serving as a switch. When implemented as a one chip package IC, at least 67% of savings compared to existing parts can be achieved.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.9 s.90
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• pp.667-672
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• 2006

Agglutination is one of the most commonly employed reactions in clinical diagnosis. In this paper, we have designed and fabricated nickel mold insert for injection molding of a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for the purpose of the efficient detection of agglutination. In the presented microfluidic lab-on-a-chip, two inlets for sample blood and reagent, flow guiding microchannels, improved serpentine laminating micromixer(ISLM) and reaction microwells are fully integrated. The ISLM, recently developed by our group, can highly improve mixing of the sample blood and reagent in the microchannel, thereby enhancing reaction of agglutinogens and agglutinins. The reaction microwell was designed to contain large volume of about $25{\mu}l$ of the mixture of sample blood and reagent. The result of agglutination in the reaction microwell could be determined by means of the level of the light transmission. To achieve the cost-effectiveness, the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip was realized by the injection molding of COC(cyclic olefin copolymer) and thermal bonding of two injection molded COC substrates. To define microfeatures in the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip precisely, the nickel mold inserts of lab-on-a-chip for the injection molding were fabricated by combining the UV photolithography with a negative photoresist SU-8 and the nickel electroplating process. The microfluidic lab-on-a-chip developed in this study could be applied to various clinical diagnosis based on agglutination.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.292-301
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• 2010

To restore visual sensation of blind patients, we have proposed a fully implantable retinal prosthesis comprising an three dimensionally (3D) stacked retinal chip for transforming optical signal to electrical signal, a flexible cable with stimulus electrode array for stimulating retina cells, and coupling coils for power transmission. The 3D stacked retinal chip is consisted of several LSI chips such as photodetector, signal processing circuit, and stimulus current generator. They are vertically stacked and electrically connected using 3D integration technology. Our retinal prosthesis has a small size and lightweight with high resolution, therefore it could increase the patients` quality of life (QOL). For realizing the fully implantable retinal prosthesis, we developed a retinal prosthesis module comprising a retinal prosthesis chip and a flexible cable with stimulus electrode array for generating optimal stimulus current. In this study, we used a 2D retinal chip as a prototype retinal prosthesis chip. We fabricated the polymide-based flexible cable of $20{\mu}m$ thickness where 16 channels Pt stimulus electrode array was formed in the cable. Pt electrode has an impedance of $9.9k{\Omega}$ at 400Hz frequency. The retinal prosthesis chip was mounted on the flexible cable by an epoxy and electrically connected by Au wire. The retinal prosthesis chip was cappted by a silicone to pretect from corrosive environments in an eyeball. Then, the fabricated retinal prosthesis module was implanted into an eyeball of a rabbit. We successfully recorded electrically evoked potential (EEP) elicited from the rabbit brain by the current stimulation supplied from the implanted retinal prosthesis module. EEP amplitude was increased linearly with illumination intensity and irradiation time of incident light. The retinal prosthesis chip was well functioned after implanting into the eyeball of the rabbit.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.341-352
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• 2012

This paper presents a Processing Engine (PE) which is used in Low Density Parity Codec (LDPC) application with a novel charge-recovery logic called pseudo-NMOS boost logic (pNBL), to achieve high-speed and low power dissipation. pNBL is a high-overdriven and low area consuming charge recovery logic, which belongs to boost logic family. Proposed Processing Engine is used in LDPC circuit to reduce operating power dissipation and increase the processing speed. To demonstrate the performance of proposed PE, a test chip is designed and fabricated with 0.18 2m CMOS technology. Simulation results indicate that proposed PE with pNBL dissipates only 1 pJ/cycle when working at the frequency of 403 MHz, which is only 36% of PE with the conventional static CMOS gates. The measurement results show that the test chip can work as high as 609 MHz with the energy dissipation of 2.1 pJ/cycle.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.08a
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• pp.89.3-89
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• 1998