• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.55-55
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• 2018

Recently, amorphous oxides such as InGaZnO (IGZO) and InZnO (IZO) as a channel layer of an oxide TFT have been attracted by advantages such as high mobility, good uniformity, and high transparency. In order to apply such an amorphous oxide TFTs to a display, the stability in various environments must be ensured. In the InGaZnO which has been studied in the past, Ga elements act as a suppressor of oxygen vacancy and result in a decreased mobility at the same time. Previous studies have been showed that the InZnO, which does not contain Ga, can achieve high mobility, but has relatively poor stability under various instability environments. In this study, the TFTs using $IZO/Al_2O_3$ double layer structure were studied. The introduction of an $Al_2O_3$ interlayer between source/drain and channel causes superior electrical characteristics and electrical stability as well as reduced contact resistance with optimally perfect ohmic contact. For the IZO and $Al_2O_3$ bilayer structures, the IZO 30nm IZO channels were prepared at $Ar:O_2=30:1$ by sputtering and the $Al_2O_3$ interlayer were depostied with various thickness by ALD at $150^{\circ}C$. The optimal sample exhibits considerably good TFT performance with $V_{th}$ of -3.3V and field effect mobility of $19.25cm^2/Vs$, and reduced $V_{th}$ shift under positive bias stress stability, compared to conventional IZO TFT. The enhanced TFT performances are closely related to the nice ohmic contact properties coming from the defect passivation of the IZO surface inducing charge traps, and we will provide the detail mechanism and model via electrical analysis and transmission line method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.357-358
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• 2013

The non-linear characteristics of ON states are important for the application to the high density cross-point memory industry because the sneak current in neighbor cells occurred during reading, erasing, and writing process. Kw of above 20 in ON states, which is the writing current @ Vwrite/the current @ 1/2Vwrite, was required in cross-point ReRAM memory industry. The high current density non-linear IV curve of ZnSe selector was shown and the ALD HfO2 switching device has the linear properties of ON states and the compliance current of 100 uA. To evaluate the performance of the selection device, we connected itto HfO2 switching device in series. The bottom electrode of the selection device was connected to the top electrode of the RRAM. All of the bias was applied with respect to the top electrode of the selection device, whereas the bottom electrode of the RRAM was grounded. In the cross-point application, 1/2Vwrite and -1/2Vwrite were applied to the word-line and bit-line, respectively, which were connected to the selected cell, and a zero bias was applied to the unselected word-lines and bit-lines. The current @ 1/2Vwrite of the unselected cells was blocked by the selection device, thus eliminating the sneak path and obtaining a writing voltage margin. Using this method, the writing voltage margin was analyzed on the basis of the memory size.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.247-252
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• 2009

This paper presents an Integer-N phase-locked loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer using a novel prescaler based on a charge pump and clock triggering circuit. A quadrature VCO has been designed for the 900MHz UHF RFID application. In this circuit, a voltage-controlled oscillator(VCO), a novel Prescaler, phase frequency detector(PFD), charge pump(CP), and analog lock detector(ALD) have been integrated with 0.35-${\mu}m$CMOS process. The integer divider has been developed with a verilog-HDL module, and the PLL mixed mode simulation has been performed with Spectre-Verilog co-simulator. The sweep range of VCO is designed from 828 to 960 MHz and the VCO generates four phase quadrature signals. The simulation results show that the phase noise of VCO is -102dBc/Hz at 100 KHz offset frequency, and the maximum lock-in time is about 4us with 32MHz step change (from 896 to 928 MHz).

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.13.1-13.1
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• 2009

Transparent electronics has attracted many interests, for it can open new applications for consumer electronics, transportation, business, and military. Among them, display backplane, thin film transistor (TFT) array would be the most attractive application. Many researchers have been investigating oxide semiconductors for transparent channel material of TFT since the report for transparent amorphous oxide semiconductor (TAOS) TFT by Hosono group and ZnO TFT by Wager group. Especially, oxide TFTs have been intensively investigated during a couple of years since the first demonstration of ZnO-TFT driving AM-OLED. Many papers regarding the fabrication and performance of oxide TFTs, and active matrix display driven by oxide TFTs have been reported. Now lots of people have confidence in the competitiveness of oxide TFTs for the backplane of AM-Display. Especially, high mobility, uniformity, fairly good stability, and low cost process make oxide TFTs applied even to a large size AM-OLED. Last year, Samsung mobile display, former SID, reported 12" AM-OLED driven by IZGO-TFT and it seems that the remained issue for the mass production is the bias temperature stability. Here, we will introduce the application of oxide TFT and important issue for oxide TFT to be used for the direct printing.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.491-496
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• 2011

Al-doped ZnO film on glass substrate is deposited by ALD in low temperature, using 4-step process (DEZ-$H_2O$-TMA-$H_2O$). To find out the optimal film condition for TCO material, we fabricate Al-doped ZnO films by increasing Al doping concentration at $100^{\circ}C$, so that the Al-doped film of 5 at% shows the lowest resistivity ($1.057{\times}10^{-2}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$) and the largest grain size (38.047 nm). Afterwards, the electrical and physical characteristics in Al-doped films of 5 at% are also compared in accordance with increasing deposition temperature. All the films show the optical transmittance over 80% and the film deposited at $250^{\circ}C$ demonstrates the superior resistivity ($1.237{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$).

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.243-247
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• 2012

A ruthenium (Ru) catalytic layer and a conventional Pt layer were assessed as counter electrodes (CE) for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Ru films with different thicknesses of 34, 46, and 90 nm were deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Pt layers with the same thicknesses were prepared by sputtering. $0.45cm^2$ DSSCs were prepared and their properties were characterized by FE-SEM, cyclic voltammetry (CV), impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and current-voltage (I-V). FE-SEM revealed that the crystallized Ru films and Pt films had been deposited quite conformally. CV showed that the catalytic activity of Pt was much greater than that of Ru. In addition, although the catalytic activity of Pt did not depend on the thickness, that of Ru showed an increase with increasing thickness. Impedance analysis revealed high charge transfer resistance at the Ru interface and a decrease with increasing Ru thickness, whereas Pt showed low resistance with no thickness dependence. Despite the relatively small catalytic activity of Ru, the I-V result revealed the average energy conversion efficiency of Ru and Pt to be 2.98% and 6.57%, respectively. These results suggest that Ru can be used as counter electrodes in DSSCs due to its extremely low temperature process compatibility.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2019

Recent industrialization has led to a high demand for the use of fossil fuels. Therefore, the need for producing hydrogen and its utilization is essential for a sustainable society. For an eco-friendly future technology, photoelectrochemical water splitting using solar energy has proven promising amongst many other candidates. With this technique, semiconductors can be used as photocatalysts to generate electrons by light absorption, resulting in the reduction of hydrogen ions. The photocatalysts must be chemically stable, economically inexpensive and be able to utilize a wide range of light. From this perspective, cuprous oxide($Cu_2O$) is a promising p-type semiconductor because of its appropriate band gap. However, a major hindrance to the use of $Cu_2O$ is its instability at the potential in which hydrogen ion is reduced. In this study, gold is used as a bottom electrode during electrodeposition to obtain a preferential growth along the (111) plane of $Cu_2O$ while imperfections of the $Cu_2O$ thin films are removed. This study investigates the photoelectrochemical properties of $Cu_2O$. However, severe photo-induced corrosion impedes the use of $Cu_2O$ as a photoelectrode. Two candidates, $TiO_2$ and $SnO_2$, are selected for the passivation layer on $Cu_2O$ by by considering the Pourbaix-diagram. $TiO_2$ and $SnO_2$ passivation layers are deposited by atomic layer deposition(ALD) and a sputtering process, respectively. The investigation of the photoelectrochemical properties confirmed that $SnO_2$ is a good passivation layer for $Cu_2O$.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.67-70
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• 2022

In order to prevent water vapor and oxygen permeation in the organic light emitting diodes (OLED), Al₂O₃ thin-film encapsulation (TFE) technology were investigated. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) method was used for making the Al₂O₃ TFE layer because it has superior barrier performance with advantages of excellent uniformity over large scales at relatively low deposition temperatures. In this study, the thickness of the Al₂O₃ layer was varied by controlling the numbers of the unit pulse cycle including Tri Methyl Aluminum(Al(CH₃)₃) injection, Ar purge, and H₂O injection. In this case, several process parameters such as injection pulse times, Ar flow rate, precursor temperature, and substrate temperatures were fixed for analysis of the effect only on the thickness of the Al₂O₃ layer. As results, at least the thickness of 39 nm was required in order to obtain the minimum WVTR of 9.04 mg/m²day per one Al₂O₃ layer and a good transmittance of 90.94 % at 550 nm wavelength.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.495-500
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• 2010

In this study, $Al_2O_3$ and $TiO_2$ films was deposited on to PES (poly(ethersulfon) substrate by using atomic layer deposition as functions of deposition temperature and plasma power. The density and carbon contents of $Al_2O_3$ and $TiO_2$ films was changed by varying process conditions. High density thin films was achieved through optimizing the process conditions. Buffer layer was deposited prior to the processing of upper thin films to avoid PES surface destruction during the high power plasma process and to enhances the tortuous path for water vapor permeation for the defect decoupling effect. The water vapor transmission rate by using MOCON test was investigated to analyze the effect. Water vaper permeation properties was improved by using the inorganic multi-layer passivation layer and activation energy of the water vapor permeation was increased.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.229-229
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• 2010

With the scaling down of ultra large integrated circuits (ULSI) to the sub-50 nm technology node, the need for an ultra-thin, continuous and conformal diffusion barrier and Cu seed layer is increasing. However, diffusion barrier and Cu seed layer formation with a physical vapor deposition (PVD) method has become difficult as the technology node is reduced to 30 nm and beyond. Recent work on self-forming barrier processes using PVD Cu alloys have attracted great attention due to the capability of conformal ultra-thin barrier formation using a simple technique. However, as in the case of the conventional barrier and Cu seed layer, PVD of the Cu alloy seed layer will eventually encounter the difficulty in conformal deposition in narrow line trenches and via holes. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has been known for its good step coverage and precise thickness control, and is a candidate technique for the formation of a thin conformal barrier layer and Cu seed layer. Conformal Cu-Mn seed layers were deposited by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) at low temperature ($120^{\circ}C$), and the Mn content in the Cu-Mn alloys were controlled form 0 to approximately 10 atomic percent with various Mn precursor feeding times. Resistivity of the Cu-Mn alloy films decreased by annealing due to out-diffusion of Mn atoms. Out-diffused Mn atoms were segregated to the surface of the film and interface between a Cu-Mn alloy and $SiO_2$, resulting in self-formed $MnO_x$ and $MnSi_xO_y$, respectively. No inter-diffusion was observed between Cu and $SiO_2$ after annealing at $500^{\circ}C$ for 12 h, indicating an excellent diffusion barrier property of the $MnSi_xO_y$. The adhesion between Cu and $SiO_2$ was enhanced by the formation of $MnSi_xO_y$. Continuous and conductive Cu-Mn seed layers were deposited with PEALD into 32 nm $SiO_2$ trench, enabling a low temperature process, and the trench was perfectly filled using electrochemical plating (ECD) under conventional conditions. Thus, it is the resultant self-forming barrier process with PEALD Cu-Mn alloy film as a seed layer for plating Cu that has further potential to meet the requirement of the smaller than 30 nm node.