• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.106-112
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• 2014

Here, we demonstrated the optimum design of pillar microstructure for efficient microdroplet merging. The microfluidic device mainly consisted of programmable microvalves and pillar microstructures. Based on the system, aqueous droplets were continuously generated at T-junction using actuating of integrated programmable microvalaves under the immiscible continuous fluid (mineral oil containing 0.5 wt% Span 80). The principle of merging process depended on the competitive correlation of hydraulic pressure of continuous phase and Laplace pressure of the droplet. We found that the design of the micropillars controls above two pressures. Finally, it was demonstrated that the microfluidic system could be able to efficient biochemical reaction. We expect that the microfluidic system is useful analytical or reaction tools in fundamental science, biotechnology, and chemical engineering.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2016

In this paper, a novel flexible microfluidic metamaterial absorber is proposed for remote chemical sensor applications. The proposed metamaterial absorber consists of a periodic of split-ring-cross resonators(SRCRs) and a microfluidic channel. The SRCR patterns are inkjet-printed using silver nanoparticle inks on paper. The microfluidic channels are laser-etched on polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) material. The proposed absorber can detect change of the effective permittivity at different liquids. Therefore, the absorber can be used for a remote chemical sensor by detecting change of the resonant frequencies. The performance of the proposed absorber is demonstrated with full-wave simulation and measurement results. The experimental results shows that the resonant frequency is 10.49 GHz at the empty channel. When ethanol and DI-water are injected into the channel, the resonant frequencies are 10.04 GHz and 8.9 GHz, respectively.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.102-107
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• 2011

In this paper, a microfluidic array biochip for simultaneously detecting multiple antigen-antibody bindings was designed and implemented. The biochip has the single channel in which microreaction chambers are serially connected, and the antibody-coated microbeads are packed in each microreaction chamber. In addition, the weir structure was fabricated in the microchannel using the gray-scale photolithography in order to trap the microbeads in the microreaction chamber. Three kinds of antibodies were chosen, and the antibodies were immobilized onto the microbeads by the streptavidin-biotin conjugation. In the experiment, as the fluorescence-labeled antigens were injected into the microchannel, the antigen-antibody bindings were completed in 10 minutes. When the solution with multiple antigens was injected into the microchannel, it was observed that the fluorescence intensity increased in only the corresponding microreaction chambers with few non-specific binding. The microfluidic array biochip implemented in this study provides, even with the consumption of tiny amount of sample and fast reaction time to simultaneously detect multiple immunoreactions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.277.1-277.1
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• 2013

Molecular diagnostics consists of three processes, which are a sample pretreatment, a nucleic acid amplification, and an amplicon detection. Among three components, sample pretreatment is an important process in that it can increase the limit of detection by purifying nucleic acid in biological sample from contaminants that may interfere with the downstream genetic analysis such as nucleic acid amplification and detection. To achieve point-of-care virus detection system, the sample pretreatment process needs to be simple, rapid, and automatic. However, the commercial RNA extraction kits such as Rneasy (Qiagen) or MagnaPure (Roche) kit are highly labor-intensive and time-consuming due to numerous manual steps, and so it is not adequate for the on-site sample preparation. Herein, we have developed a rotary microfluidic system to extract and purify the RNA without necessity of external mechanical syringe pumps to allow flow control using microfluidic technology. We designed three reservoirs for sample, washing buffer, and elution buffer which were connected with different dimensional microfluidic channels. By controlling RPM, we could dispense a RNA sample solution, a washing buffer, and an elution buffer successively, so that the RNA was captured in the sol-gel solid phase, purified, and eluted in the downstream. Such a novel rotary sample preparation system eliminates some complicated hardwares and human intervention providing the opportunity to construct a fully integrated genetic analysis microsystem.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.730-734
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• 2019

Thermophoresis is a transport phenomenon of particles driven by a temperature gradient of a medium. In this paper, we discuss the thermophoresis of particles in microfluidic channels. In a non-fluidic, stagnant channel, the thermophoretic transport of micro-particles was found to be larger in proportion to the voltage applied to the platinum wire heat source installed in the channel. The variation of the temperature around the platinum wire depending on the voltage was estimated, by using the Callendar-van Dusen equation. The thermophoretic behavior of nano-particles in the same system was observed, which is similar to that of the microparticles. Finally, we fabricated a Y-shaped microfluidic channel with a platinum wire heat source installed in the channel, to realize the thermophoretic phenomenon of the particles in the suspension flowing through the channel. It is shown that the flow of the suspension can be controlled based on the thermophoretic principle.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2014

In this study, we fabricate an integrated microfluidic chip with a planar Hall effect (PHE) sensor for single magnetic bead detection. The PHE sensor was constructed with a junction size of $10{\mu}m{\times}10{\mu}m$ using a trilayer structure of Ta(3 nm)/NiFe(10 nm)/Cu(1.2 nm)/IrMn(10 nm)/Ta(3 nm). The sensitivity of the PHE sensor was 19.86 ${\mu}V/Oe$. A diameter of 8.18 ${\mu}m$ magnetic beads was used, of which the saturation magnetization was ~2.1 emu/g. The magnetic susceptibility ${\chi}$ of these magnetic beads was calculated to be ~0.14. The diluted magnetic beads solution was introduced to the microfluidic channel attributing a single bead flow and simultaneously the PHE sensor voltage was measured to be 0.35 ${\mu}V$. The integrated microchip was able to detect a magnetic moment of $1.98{\times}10^{-10}$ emu.

• Clean Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.90-95
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• 2015

Digital microfluidic electroporation system was used for the transformation of microalgae and we have obtained higher transformation efficiency and viability than that of conventional method. Key parameters of electroporation such as pulse voltage, number, and duration time were systematically investigated for two different microalgal strains with and without cell wall. We have found that cell wall does not always have negative effects on the gene transformation of microalgae. Parallel processing of proposed digital microfluidic electroporation was demonstrated together with on chip culture of microalgae.

• Korea-Australia Rheology Journal
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2003

A new method is introduced to build up organic/organic multilayer films composed of cationic poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and negatively charged poly (sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) (PSS) using the spinning process. The adsorption process is governed by both the viscous force induced by fast solvent elimination and the electrostatic interaction between oppositely charged species. On the other hand, the centrifugal and air shear forces applied by the spinning process significantly enhances desorption of weakly bound polyelectrolyte chains and also induce the planarization of the adsorbed polyelectrolyte layer. The film thickness per bilayer adsorbed by the conventional dipping process and the spinning process was found to be about 4 ${\AA}$ and 24 ${\AA}$, respectively. The surface of the multilayer films prepared with the spinning process is quite homogeneous and smooth. Also, a new approach to create multilayer ultrathin films with well-defined micropatterns in a short process time is Introduced. To achieve such micropatterns with high line resolution in organic multilayer films, microfluidic channels were combined with the convective self-assembly process employing both hydrogen bonding and electrostatic intermolecular interactions. The channels were initially filled with polymer solution by capillary pressure and the residual solution was then removed by the .spinning process.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.244-249
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• 2007

Fluidic conditions for the separation of phases were surveyed in a microfluidic aqueous two-phase extraction system. The infusion ratio between polyethylene glycol (PEG) and dextran solution defines the concentrations of each polymer in micro-channel, which determine the phase-separation. The appropriate ratio between PEG (M.W. 8000, 10%, w/v) and dextran T500 (M.W. 500000, 5%, w/v) in order to perform the separation of phases of both polymers was observed as changing the mixed ratio of both polymers. Based on the fluidic conditions, stable two-phase solutions were obtained within 4% to 8% and 3% to 1% of PEG and dextran, respectively. In addition, the characteristics of the two-phase were discussed. The separation technique studied in the paper can be applied for the implementation of a lab-on-a chip which can detect various biological entities such cells, bacterium, and virus in an integrated manner using built in a biosensor inside the chip.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2014

This paper describes the measurement of performance evaluation of rotational flow varying chamber size and Reynolds number. Through the experimental visualization of the flow rotation, the number and position of flow rotation in the $2{\times}2$ microfluidic centrifuge were examined. At a chamber width of 250${\mu}m$, single flow rotation was obtained over at a Reynolds number of 300, while at a chamber width of 500 ${\mu}m$, single flow rotation did not appear. For performance evaluation, the intensity in microchamber was measured during 20 sec. At a chamber width of 250 ${\mu}m$, performance of rotational flow increased as Reynolds number increased. However, the variation of intensity in microchamber remained unchanged at a chamber width of 500 ${\mu}m$. The numerical analysis showed that the threshold centrifugal acceleration to obtain rotational flow for ejected particles was 200g.