KR102543765B1 - Carbon needle and manufacturing method thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a carbon needle and a manufacturing method thereof. The present invention relates to a carbon needle coated with carbon on a stainless needle by high vacuum carbon surface treatment and a manufacturing method thereof.

Description

Carbon needle and manufacturing method thereof {Carbon needle and manufacturing method thereof}

The present invention relates to a carbon needle and a manufacturing method thereof. The present invention relates to a carbon needle coated with carbon on a stainless needle by high vacuum carbon surface treatment and a manufacturing method thereof.

In general, acupuncture and moxibustion have been used as medical means in Korea for a long time and have been receiving attention and practiced until now, and in recent years, they have been spotlighted abroad.

Hwa acupuncture is described as a Chinese acupuncture or acupuncture in the Chinese medical book Yellow Emperor Neijing (黃帝內經) 2200 years ago, and it is also described in Korean medicine books such as Donguibogam, and is a traditional acupuncture method that is currently covered by medical insurance in clinical practice. am.

Hwachim is one of the traditional oriental medicine therapies that treat various diseases by rapidly inserting and extracting needles in certain parts of the body by heating them. In modern times, Hwachim can be used for various diseases such as internal medicine, gynecology, and external medicine, as well as diseases such as non-symptoms, naryeok, carp, etc., which were previously treated in modern times.

A new method of acupuncture, which heats the stagnation directly with fire after inserting acupuncture needles or attaches moxa moxibustion to the needle and heats it to deliver thermal stimulation to the lesion, is a treatment for damage to dense connective tissue, including ligaments, fibrotic joint capsules, and tendons, as well as fibrosis and thickening of tissues. Known to be effective, interest in it is growing.

As a result of analyzing the types of diseases applied to Hwachim in 19 winning papers, ligament lesions were the most common with 5 cases, low back pain in 3 cases, arthritis in 2 cases, shoulder pain in Lou Gehrig patients in 1 case, poor circulation, tendonitis, fractures, lumbar intervertebral disc herniation, Pressure ulcer, colitis, diffuse pigmented villonodular synovitis, trigeminal neuralgia, and facial spasm were found in one case each. In addition, among them, 1 paper on fracture and 2 papers treating back pain treated fracture disease and back pain through mechanism. Therefore, in particular, in the post-injection heating method, all nine papers except one for arthritis and one for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis with back pain tried to treat ligaments and tendons.

In addition, looking at the parts to be treated in 8 papers that treated ligaments, the spine-pelvic area was the most frequent with 4 pieces, and the specific parts were 1 piece of the posterior ligament group in the spine-pelvis area, 3 pieces of the iliac ligament and posterior sacroiliac ligament, knee and The ankle areas were 2 pieces each, and the specific areas were 2 pieces of medial collateral ligament in the knee and 2 pieces of anterior collateral ligament and 2 pieces of calcaneal ligament in the ankle. The specific area to be treated in the thesis on the tendon was the biceps tendon.

Acupuncture, which aims to treat the disease by stimulating acupuncture needles inside the body, often cannot achieve the purpose of treatment with simple stimulation alone when the disease is deep or long, so artificially burns the lesion by heating the tip of the needle over fire and instantaneously inserting needles Although fire acupuncture therapy is widely used to obtain natural healing power that occurs during the process of treating burns by applying a fire acupuncture needle, there is a problem in that the heat source cannot be concentrated on the deep damaged area because the fire acupuncture cools down in the skin tissue.

In other words, in the process of introducing acupuncture needles into the fire, all heat is unnecessarily taken away from the skin or muscle layer of the epidermis that the needles first come into contact with, and the heat cools down in the deep disease that needs treatment, so no matter how quickly the needles are introduced, a small amount of heat is lost. There are problems that can only be taken away.

Since needles have a simple structure, it is difficult to change them into completely new shapes. Accordingly, it is a situation that technology related to needles is being developed, which is limited to changing the material used for needles or applying (coating) a specific material to the outer surface of needles. For example, 'Patent Document 1' is an invention related to acupuncture, and there is an invention that serves to alleviate pain during acupuncture by coating the lower end and tip of the acupuncture needle with silver so that there are no irregularities.

However, silver is a heavy metal, and when needles are injected into the human body, silver may be dissolved in the blood and accumulated in the human body.

In order to compensate for these problems, acupuncture coated with carbon with high thermal conductivity was developed and developed to be used in various ways such as acupuncture and hot acupuncture (electric type, moxibustion heating type).

KR 20-0285801 Y1 (2002. 08. 02.)

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and the problem to be solved in the present invention is to provide a carbon needle that can maintain high stability even when injected into the human body and a manufacturing method thereof.

In order to solve the above problems, a surface-treated carbon needle is provided so that a carbon coating layer is formed on the stainless steel needle with a thickness of 0.05 to 0.2 mm.

In addition, the surface treatment is characterized in that DLC coating by CVD or PVD method.

In addition, cleaning the surface of the stainless needle; an ion etching step of bombarding a stainless needle with ions from argon gas to remove fine oxides; and a coating step of depositing an amorphous carbon hydrogenation (a-C:H) layer on the surface of a stainless needle to a thickness of 0.05 to 0.2 mm; It provides a carbon needle manufacturing method comprising a.

The DLC-coated carbon needle and its manufacturing method according to the present invention have high thermal conductivity and can be used as a heating needle. In addition, in the case of DLC coating containing nano-carbon materials, there is an advantage that it can be used as a carbon needle capable of delivering pharmacological substances.

1 is a photograph of a carbon needle prepared according to an embodiment of the present invention.
Figure 2 is a data capture including the thermal conductivity test method and results.

The terms or words used in this specification and claims conform to the technical spirit of the present invention based on the "principle that the inventor can appropriately define the concept of terms in order to explain his or her invention in the best way" It should be interpreted as the meaning and concept of

Therefore, the embodiments described in this specification and the configurations shown in the drawings are only the most preferred embodiments of the present invention, and do not represent all of the technical spirit of the present invention, so various equivalents that can replace them at the time of the present application It should be understood that there may be water and variations.

DLC coating (Diamond-Like-Carbon coating) is a type of coating method in which carbon is the main component, and refers to a technology of forming a carbon film having a structure similar to that of diamond. In the DLC coating, hydrogen may be present depending on the method. In the academic world, DLC is also called differently depending on its characteristics. For example, aC is an abbreviation for amorphous carbon, and aC:H means aC with hydrogen present. Recently, there is also a DLC coating called ta-C, which means aC, which is close to the physical properties of diamond among DLC coatings.

DLC thin film manufacturing methods are classified into two types: PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) and CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition). The PVD method uses a solid carbon material and includes arc, sputter, and laser deposition methods. The CVD method uses gas (methane or hydrocarbon), and includes high frequency, direct current discharge, PIG (Pening Ionization Gauge), and self-discharge method.

High-frequency discharge plasma CVD method: DC discharge and RF discharge are the main methods for generating grow discharge at low gas pressure. A DLC thin film containing hydrogen is manufactured by irradiating active species such as ions and radicals to the surface of a substrate in a hydrocarbon gas plasma using C ₂ H ₂ and CH ₄ raw material gases.

PIG-type plasma CVD method: The number of carbon ions incident on the substrate and the energy of carbon ions can be independently controlled, so it is classified as a remote plasma and a DLC film containing hydrogen is obtained. It is easy to control thin film thickness, hardness, residual stress, and thin film composition, so it can be coated on various shapes of substrates, so the application range is wide. Since the plasma generation range is wide, input power and gas can be efficiently used, making it possible to coat soft metals such as Al substrates.

Sputter/Plasma CVD Combined Method: A method of sputtering carbon atoms by applying DC voltage or high-frequency power to a graphite sputter evaporation source to collide ions in an inert gas plasma with graphite. When hydrocarbon gas is injected here, film formation is performed in the same manner as in the plasma CVD method, and the film formation speed is increased. In the case of combining hydrocarbons, it is classified as remote plasma CVD, and a DLC film containing hydrogen is obtained.

Arc PVD method: This is a method of coating DLC on the negative potential substrate surface by generating carbon ions with high efficiency through vacuum arc discharge on the surface of the cathode graphite. This method was developed in the former Soviet Union and was introduced to the West in the late 1970s, and development became active. The graphite vaporization rate is fast and the ionization rate of graphite vapor is high, so the thin film formed has more diamond structure and less graphite structure. However, there is a drawback in that unionized macroparticles are mixed in the film during arc discharge, resulting in high surface roughness.

Filter arc PVD method: A magnetic filter method cathodic arc evaporation source combining a magnetic field and a geometrically curved duct to prevent large particles from being coated on the substrate was developed in the former Soviet Union in the 1970s to produce a hard carbon film with small defects. . However, the magnetic filter evaporation source has disadvantages such as low utilization efficiency, low coating speed, low productivity due to a small treatment area, and high equipment cost.

DLC classification method

The DLC classification was organized in a ternary phase diagram by Casiraghi to understand the manufacturing method and relationship. DLC coated by sputter deposition and arc PVD does not use hydrocarbons. This DLC film is characterized by the difference in sp ³ bonded carbon content and cluster structure as GLC (Graphite-Like Carbon), aC (Amorphous Carbon), and ta-C (Tetrahedral Amorphous Carbon) without hydrogen.

Another method is DLC containing hydrogen and coating hydrocarbon gas as a raw material by the plasma CVD method. It is characterized by the difference in the amount of hydrogen and sp3 bonded carbon in a-C:H (hydrogen-containing amorphous carbon) and ta-C:H (hydrogen-containing amorphous carbon), and is information to understand mechanical, optical, electrical, and chemical behavior. Among lubricating oils used in automobile and mechanical parts, DLC films with low hydrogen content have a low coefficient of friction.

Example 1. Carbon coating method

Acupuncture needles currently used in oriental medicine treatment are mostly made of stainless steel and have a circular needle shape. Stainless steel is classified as a material with low thermal conductivity compared to other metal materials.

When performing carbon surface treatment on round stainless steel materials with low thermal conductivity, a uniform thickness must be secured, anti-lamination on the stainless surface must be suppressed, and shape deformation of the stainless steel needle must not occur.

In the present invention, a high-vacuum carbon surface treatment process is used, and a technology of surface treatment of carbon material directly on a stainless matrix is adopted.

As a carrier material that performs carbon surface treatment, in the case of the CVD method, hydrocarbon gas containing carbon materials such as methane (CH4) and propane (CH3COCH3) is used as carrier gas, and carbon materials such as ion beam method or arc ion are used. In the case of the PVD method of performing surface treatment by ionization, surface treatment is performed using carbon materials capable of ionizing carbon materials or carbon materials mixed with metals.

After the surface pretreatment process using carbon nanomaterials, high vacuum carbon surface treatment may be performed.

The present invention selects a carbon surface treatment process that can minimize thermal deformation of needles applicable to oriental acupuncture needles and uniformly perform carbon surface treatment on small diameters, and selects a suitable carrier material for carbon surface treatment. Select and perform surface treatment.

The needle is placed in a vacuum chamber, the chamber is evacuated, and the needle is preheated to a low processing temperature (150°C) not exceeding 300F. The preheating step of the treatment conditions the substrate for coating, any moisture absorbed by the material is removed prior to deposition, after which the coating process begins.

After the preheating step is completed, it is switched to an ion etching step in which the product is bombarded with ions from argon gas to clean or sputter clean the needle surface and remove fine oxides. This cleaning of the surface by ions cleans the surface and improves the adhesion of the coating to saliva.

After the needle is sputter cleaned, the process moves to the coating step. When the underlayer coating reaches the appropriate thickness, the process switches to the DLC coating step to deposit a dense and smooth amorphous carbon hydride (a-C:H) layer on the needle surface.

Since the general chisel has a thickness of 0.2 to 0.4 mm, a carbon coating layer is formed with a thickness of 0.05 to 0.2 mm on the general stainless steel 0.2 mm thick chisel.

The DLC-coated carbon needles prepared according to this method have high thermal conductivity and can be used as a heating needle. In addition, in the case of DLC coating containing nano-carbon materials, there is an advantage that it can be used as a carbon needle capable of delivering pharmacological substances.

Example 2. Thermal conductivity test of carbon needle

Stainless steel is a material with low thermal conductivity. In the case of 18Cr-8Ni stainless steel, the thermal conductivity is 14 (kcal/℃) and the thermal conductivity is 0.016 (m ² /h), which is remarkably low. The thermal conductivity of general iron is 62 (kcal/℃), and the thermal conductivity is lower than 0.073 (m ² /h).

Due to these characteristics, when preheating a stainless acupuncture needle by using a torch for thermal treatment during oriental medicine treatment, even if the tip or a specific part of the acupuncture is heated, heat is directly transferred from the heating part to the air rather than heat transfer to the human body where the acupuncture is inserted. This emission phenomenon is shown.

In order to suppress this phenomenon and secure functionality for thermal treatment, functional carbon surface treatment capable of transferring heat to existing acupuncture needles is performed.

In the case of a high-quality carbon needle capable of transmitting a heat source, it accurately transmits the temperature generated by the thermal therapy device, so that the treating doctor as well as the receiving patient can receive treatment while quantitatively confirming it.

Figure 2 is a data capture including the thermal conductivity test method and results.

Place a 0.25mm recession thickness normal needle, 0.25mm recession thickness carbon needle (0.2mm with 0.05mm carbon coating), and 0.4mm recession thickness carbon needle (0.2mm with 0.2mm carbon coating) on the electric iron, warm up for 2 to 3 minutes, and then The middle part was taken with a thermal imaging camera.

When a heat source of 50 degrees is applied through an iron-type electric heating device, the general needle has a thermal conductivity of 26.2 degrees and a thermal conductivity of 52.4%, and a carbon-coated needle with a needle thickness of 0.25 has a thermal conductivity of 90.2% at 45.1 degrees and a carbon-coated needle with a needle thickness of 0.40 This shows a thermal conductivity of 95.8%. Therefore, carbon-coated needles show 1.8 times higher thermal conductivity than general needles.

Claims (3)

delete delete Preheating the stainless needle to a temperature of less than 150 ℃;
Cleaning the surface of the stainless needle;
an ion etching step of bombarding a stainless needle with ions from argon gas to remove fine oxides; and
A coating step of depositing an amorphous carbon hydrogenation layer on the recessed surface of the stainless needle to a thickness of 0.05 to 0.2 mm; Carbon needle manufacturing method comprising a.

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