We have proposed and demonstrated a fiber optic RH (relative humidity) sensor based on fiber Bragg grating covered with a polyimide film. As the polyimide film absolves the moisture in the air, its volume expands. As a result, the grating period of the FBG (fiber Bragg grating) covered with a polyimide film becomes wide and the Bragg wavelength is shifted. The sensor is implemented by fixing a 30 ㎛ thickness polyimide film on the surface of an optical fiber grating using an adhesive, and the characteristics of the device according to humidity are analyzed. The fabricated FBG RH sensor showed a high sensitivity of 0.0186 nm/RH% and a wide measurement range from 30% to 90%. The influence of environmental temperature on the characteristics of the RH sensor was also measured and analyzed. The feasibility of commercialization is presented.

The field of liquid crystal display (LCD) is constantly in the spotlight and the process of depositing an alignment layer in the LCD manufacturing process is very important to obtain excellent performance such as low-power driving and high-speed response to improve LCD performance. Therefore, research on liquid crystal (LC) alignment is being actively conducted. When manufacturing LCD, it is necessary to consider the effect of the alignment layer thickness as one of the factors affecting various LCD performances. In addition, previous studies confirmed the LC alignment characteristics correlate with the rotation speed in the spin coating process. Therefore, the electro-optical properties of the LCD were investigated by manufacturing a polyimide alignment layer by varying the rotation speed in the spin coating process in this study. It was confirmed that the thickness of the polyimide alignment layer was controlled according to the spin coating conditions. The average transmittances of anti-parallel LC cells at the spin coating speed of 2,500 rpm and 3,000 rpm are about 60%, which indicates that the LC cell has relatively higher performance. At the spin coating speed of 3,000 rpm, the voltage-transmittance curve of twisted nematic (TN) LC cell was below 1.5 V, which means that the TN LC cell operated at a low power. In addition, high-speed operating characteristics were confirmed with a response time of less than 30 ms. From these derived data, we confirmed that the ideal spin coating speed is 3,000 rpm. And these results provide an optimized polyimide alignment layer process when considering enhanced future LCD manufacturing.

ZnO-based transparent conductive films have been widely studied to achieve high performance optoelectronic devices such as next generation flexible and transparent display systems. In order to achieve a transparent flexible ZnO-based device, a low temperature growth technique using a flexible polymer substrate is required. In this work, high quality flexible ZnO films were grown on colorless polyimide substrate using atomic layer deposition (ALD). Transparent ZnO films grown from 80 to 200℃ were fabricated with a metal-semiconductor-metal structure photodetectors (PDs). As the growth temperature of ZnO film increases, the photocurrent of UV PDs increases, while the sensitivity of that decreases. In addition, it is found that the response times of the PDs become shorter as the growth temperature increases. Based on these results, we suggest that high-quality ZnO film can be grown below 200℃ in an atomic layer deposition system, and can be applied to transparent and flexible UV PDs with very fast response time and high photocurrent.

In this paper, in order to quantify the peristalsis occurrence in a guinea pig`s large intestine, a miniaturized air-gap capacitive pressure sensor was fabricated through micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS). The proposed pressure sensor is a two-layered biocompatible polyimide substrate consisting of an air-gap capacitive plates between the substrates. The proposed pressure sensor was designed with a careful consideration of the structure and motility mechanism of the guinea pig`s large intestine. Artificial pellets were mounted on a prototype pressure sensor to provide some redundancies in the form of size and shape of the guinea pig feces. Capacitance of a prototype sensor was recorded to be 2.5 ~ 3 pF. This capacitance value was later converted to count value using a lab fabricated data conversion system. Sensitivity of the pressure sensor was recorded to be below 1 mmHg per atmospheric pressure. During in vivo testing, artificial peristalsis caused by drug injection was measured by inserting the prototype pressure sensor into the guinea pig’s large intestine and pressure data obtained due to artificial peristalsis was graphed using a labview program. The proposed pressure sensor could measure the pressure changes in the proximal, medial, and distal parts of the large intestine. The results of the experiment confirmed that pressure changes of guinea pig`s large intestine was proportional to the degree of drug injection.

In this study, we fabricated the dual gate (DG) ion-sensitive field-effect-transistor (ISFET) with flexible polyimide (PI) extended gate (EG). The DG ISFETs significantly enhanced the sensitivity of pH in electrolytes from 60 mV/pH to 1152.17 mV/pH and effectively improved the drift and hysteresis phenomenon. This is attributed to the capacitive coupling effect between top gate and bottom gate insulators of the channel in silicon-on-transistor(SOI) metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) FETs. Accordingly, it is expected that the PI-EG based DG-ISFETs is promising technology for high-performance flexible biosensor applications.

Electrode pattern effects on the capacitive humidity sensor were investigated. The fabrication of the capacitive humidity sensor was formed with three steps. The bottom electrode was formed on the silicon substrate with Pt/Ti thin layer by using shadow mask and e-beam evaporator. The photosensitive polyimide was formed on the bottom electrode by using photolithography process as a humidity sensitive thin film. The upper electrode was formed on the polyimide thin film with Pt/Ti thin layer by using e-beam evaporator and lift-off method. Three electrode patterns, such as circle, square, and triangle pattern, were used and changed the sizes to investigate the effects. The capacitances of the sensors were decreased 622 to 584 pF with the area decreament of patterns 250,000 to 196,250 μm2. From these results, a capacitive humidity sensor with photo sensitive polyimide is expected to be applied to a high sensitive humidity sensor.

The polyimide composite membranes were prepared with polyimide composite solutions including graphenes by using the phase inversion method. The morphologies of these membranes were significantly changed according to the grapheme loadings in composite solutions and the solvent systems of the composite solutions. The finger-like macro-voids were formed in the hollow fiber membranes which were prepared in the NMP solvent system with a small amount of ethanol. As increasing the content of the viscous alcohols such as glycerol or 1.3-propanediol in the composite solution, however, the morphologies of the hollow fiber membranes were changed to sponge-like types. In case of flat membranes, the increase of grapheme content in polyimide composites causes that their membranes change from the finger-like macro-porous to sponge-like morphologies.

Apart from the deposition of alignment layer, alignment process needs to be involved for alignment of liquid crystal (LC) molecules. To simplify manufacturing process, several method were used such as rubbing, ion-beam irradiation, UV irradiation, and lithography. But, eventually it needs another treatment for LC alignment. Here, we suggested Si induced polyimide (PI) alignment layer at low temperature. Using this method, we are able to eliminate the alignment process and found that the alignment and electro-optic performance are much better than that of the rubbed PI LC cells. Compared to the rubbed PI cells, the response time was decreased by 70% and C-V characteristics have hysteresis-free.

From UV irradiation, we achieved homeotropic liquid crystal alignment on blended photo-polymer layer which is composed of polyvinyl-cinnamate (PVCi) and homeotropic polyimide (PI). From vertical alignment (VA) mode, we measured threshold voltages by various PVCi doping concentration. Also, the rise time and fall time of VA cells were measured to verify the best doping concentration. Transmittance curves showed about 70% value between 380 nm and 780 nm wavelength which mean visible region.

This research, integratable capacitive relative humidity sensor was produced using polyimide on glass substrate. Also, at the time of upper electrode formation, upper electrode grain size was affected by giving changes to sputtering condition. Through this analyzing electrical characteristics affect from capacitive relative humidity sensor was possible. Capacitance of capacitive relative humidity sensor was 330 pF, linearity of 0.6%FS and it showed less than 3% of low hysterisis. Specially, hysterisis was affected more from interface than interstitial. Also was affected by the grain size which is one of the formation condition of upper electrode.