• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.225-235
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• 2006

With the discovery in plants of the proteinaceous forisome crystalloid (Knoblauch, et al. 2003), a novel, non-living, ATP-independent biological material became available to the designer of smart materials for advanced actuating and sensing. The in vitro studies of Knoblauch, et al. show that forisomes (2-4 micron wide and 10-40 micron long) can be repeatedly stimulated to contract and expand anisotropically by shifting either the ambient pH or the ambient calcium ion concentration. Because of their unique abilities to develop and reverse strains greater than 20% in time periods less than one second, forisomes have the potential to outperform current smart materials as advanced, biomimetic, multi-functional, smart sensors or actuators. Probing forisome material properties is an immediate need to lay the foundation for synthesizing forisomebased smart materials for health monitoring of structural integrity in civil infrastructure and for aerospace hardware. Microfluidics is a growing, vibrant technology with increasingly diverse applications. Here, we use microfluidics to study the surface interaction between forisome and substrate and the conformational dynamics of forisomes within a confined geometry to lay the foundation for forisome-based smart materials synthesis in controlled and repeatable environment.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.34 no.11
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• pp.3357-3361
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• 2013

Alumina microfibers with porous structures were prepared through hydrothermal reaction, and then used to modify the surface of carbon paste electrode (CPE). After modification with alumina microfibers, the electrochemical activity of CPE was found to be greatly improved. On the surface of alumina microfibers-modified CPE, the oxidation peak current of salvianolic acid B, a main bioactive compound in Danshen with anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory effects, was remarkably increased compared with that on the bare CPE surface. The influences of pH value, amount of alumina microfibers and accumulation time were studied. Based on the strong signal amplification effects of alumina microfibers, a novel electrochemical method was developed for the detection of salvianolic acid B. The linear range was from 5 ${\mu}gL^{-1}$ to 0.3 mg $L^{-1}$, and the detection limit was 2 ${\mu}gL^{-1}$ (2.78 nM) after 1-min accumulation. The new method was successfully used to detect salvianolic acid B in ShuangDan oral liquid samples, and the recovery was over the range from 97.4% to 102.9%.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.1323-1325
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• 2008

The acetylene black (AB) was dispersed into water in the presence of dihexadecyl hydrogen phosphate (DHP) via ultrasonication, resulting in a stable and well-distributed AB/DHP suspension. After evaporation of water, an AB/DHP composite film-modified electrode was prepared. The electrochemical responses of $K_3$[Fe$(CN)_6$] at the unmodified electrode, DHP film-modified electrode and AB/DHP film-modified electrode were investigated. It is found that the AB/DHP film-modified electrode possesses larger surface area and electron transfer rate constant. Furthermore, the electrochemical behaviors of 1-naphthylacetic acid (NAA) were examined. At the AB/DHP film-modified electrode, the oxidation peak current of NAA remarkably increases. Based on this, a sensitive and convenient electrochemical method was proposed for the determination of NAA. The linear range is in the range from $4.0 {\times} 10^{-8}\;to\;5.0 {\times} 10^{-6}$ mol $L^{-1}$, and the detection limit is $1.0 {\times} 10^{-8}$ mol $L^{-1}$. Finally, this new sensing method was employed to determine NAA in several soil samples.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.24-31
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• 2003

The discoveries of antiferromagnetic coupling in Fe/Cr multilayers by Grunberg, the Giant Magneto Resistance by Fert and Grunberg and a large tunneling magnetoresistance at room temperature by Moodera have triggered enormous research on magnetic thin films and magnetoelectronic devices. Large opportunities are especially opened by the spin dependent tunneling resistance, where a strong dependence of the tunneling current on an external magnetic field can be found. We will briefly address important basic properties of these junctions like thermal, magnetic and dielectric stability and discuss scaling issues down to junction sizes below 0.01 $\mu\textrm{m}$$^2$with respect to single domain behavior, switching properties and edge coupling effects. The second part will give an overview on applications beyond the use of the tunneling elements as storage cells in MRAMs. This concerns mainly field programmable logic circuits, where we demonstrate the clocked operation of a programmed AND gate. The second 'unconventional' feature is the use as sensing elements in DNA or protein biochips, where molecules marked magnetically with commercial beads can be detected via the dipole stray field in a highly sensitive and relatively simple way.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.185-190
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• 2009

Biomedical mobile devices for ubiquitous healthcare consist of biomedical sensors and communication terminal. They have two types of configuration. One is the sensor-network type device using wired or wireless communication with intelligent sensors to acquire biomedical data. The other is the sensor embedded type device, where the data can be acquired directly by itself. There are many examples of sensor network type, such as, fall detection sensor, blood glucose sensor, and ECG sensors networked with commercial PDA phone and commercial phone terminal for ubiquitous healthcare. On the other hand, sensor embedded type mounts blood glucose sensor, accelerometer, and etc. on commercial phone. However, to enable true ubiquitous healthcare, motion sensing is essential, because users go around anywhere and their signals should be measured and monitored, when they are affected by the motion. Therefore, in this paper, two biomedical mobile devices with motion monitoring function were addressed. One is sensor-network type with motion monitoring function, which uses Zigbee communication to measure the ECG, PPG and acceleration. The other is sensor-embedded type with motion monitoring function, which also can measure the data and uses the built-in cellular phone network modem for remote connection. These devices are expected to be useful for ubiquitous healthcare in coming aged society in Korea.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.223-228
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• 2011

In this paper, we proposed a technique to recognize three states in stance phase of gait cycle. Walking assistive devices are used to help the elderly people walk or to monitor walking behavior of the disabled persons. For the effective assistance, they adopt an intelligent sensor system to understand user's current state in walking. There are three states in stance phase; Loading Response, Midstance, and Terminal Stance. We developed a foot pressure sensor using 24 FSRs (Force Sensing/Sensitive Resistors). The foot pressure patterns were integrated through the interpolation of FSR cell array. The pressure patterns were processed to get the trajectories of COM (Center of Mass). Using the trajectories of COM of foot pressure, we can recognize the three states of stance phase. The experimental results show the effective recognition of stance phase and the possibility of usage on the walking assistive device for better control and/or foot pressure monitoring.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.133-141
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• 2018

There are increasing interests on smart home systems. However, most of the existing works focus on the functionality itself. In this paper, we propose an extensible smart home system based on low power networking such as CoAP, 6LoWPAN, and Zigbee. The proposed home IoT system consists of Home APP, Home Server, Home Broker, and Power Devices. Each component of the system is connected by the low-power network technologies aforementioned. As the end device, Power Device senses the current consumption of the attached appliance and controls the power to it. Power Device reports the sensing data to Home Server via Home Broker. The Home Broker enhances the scalability of the system. Home Broker extends the service area and the user's services, and it manages the connection of the underlying devices and processes, and transmits data to Home Server from Power Devices. Through the experimental evaluation, we show that the proposed system achieves the design goals such as extensibility and low power networking.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.76-80
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• 2014

Dual-gate PCRAM which unify capacitor-less DRAM and NVM using a PCM instead of a typical SONOS flash memory is proposed as 1 transistor. $VO_2$ changes its phase between insulator and metal states by temperature and field. The front-gate and back-gate control NVM and DRAM, respectively. The feasibility of URAM is investigated through simulation using c-interpreter and finite element analysis. Threshold voltage of NVM is 0.5 V that is based on measured results from previous fabricated 1TPCM with $VO_2$. Current sensing margin of DRAM is 3 ${\mu}A$. PCM does not interfere with DRAM in the memory characteristics unlike SONOS NVM. This novel unified dual-gate PCRAM reported in this work has 1 transistor, a low RESET/SET voltage, a fast write/erase time and a small cell so that it could be suitable for future production of URAM.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.831-835
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• 2016

In this paper, a dual-channel feed-forward transimpedance(TIA) array is realized in a standard $0.18-{\mu}m$ CMOS technology which exploits automatic gain control function to provide 40-dB input dynamic range for either detecting targets nearby or sensing imminent danger situations. Compared to the previously reported conventional feed-forward TIA, the proposed automatic-gain-control feed-forward TIA(AFF-TIA) extends the input dynamic range 25 dB wider by employing a 4-level automatic gain control circuit. Measured results demonstrate the linearly varying transimpedance gain of 47 to $72dB{\Omega}$, input dynamic range of 1:100, the bandwidth of $${\geq_-}670MHz$$, the equivalent input referred noise current spectral density of 6.9 pA/${\surd}$HZ, the maximum sensitivity of -26.8 dBm for $10^{-12}BER$, and the power consumption of 27.6 mW from a single 1.8-V supply. The dual-channel chip occupies the area of $1.0{\times}0.73mm^2$ including I/O pads.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.62 no.3
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• pp.395-400
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• 2013

In this paper, we introduce the implementation of high accurate level sensor system using the pulse wave type magnetostriction sensor. When a current pulse flows along the waveguide, the magnetic field also propagates towards the end of waveguide. When this magnetic field just passes the position of the magnet for level detection, the resultant magnetic field by these two magnetic fields makes a torsional reflected signal. This is used to calculate the time difference between a interrogation pulse wave and this torsional reflected signal. The key elements and characteristics were investigated to implement level sensor system based on this principle. We introduce a method to calculate the speed of ultrasonic reflected signal and how to make a model of sensing coil. In particular, we experiment with the characteristics of the torsional reflected signal according to the changes of the interrogation voltage and displacement. To make high accurate level sensor system, two methods were compared. One is to use the comparator and time counter, the other is STFT(Short Time FFT) which is capable of the time-frequency analysis.