• Journal of the Korean Physical Society
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• v.80
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• pp.698-716
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• 2022

Laser plasmas can be produced when high-power laser beams are focused in matter. A focused laser beam of TW(terawatt)-level high power has an extremely strong electric field, so neutral atoms are immediately ionized by the laser electric field, leading to a laser-produced plasma. The laser plasma can be produced by small table-top TW lasers based on the CPA (chirped-pulse amplification) technique, and now they are rather easily available even in university laboratories. In Korea, there are several CPA-based TW (or even petawatt) lasers in a few institutions, and they have been used for diverse laser plasma physics research and applications, including the laser acceleration for electrons and ions, high-power THz (tera-hertz) generation, advanced light sources, high-energy-density plasmas, plasma optics, etc. This paper reviews some of the laser plasma physics research and applications that have been performed in several universities and research institutes.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.211-215
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• 2017

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) and wet etching are employed in existing texturing processes to fabricate solar cells. Laser etching is used for particular purposes such as selective etching for grooves. However, such processes require a higher level of cost and longer processing time and those factors affect the unit cost of each process of fabricating solar cells. As a way to reduce the unit cost of this process of making solar cells, an atmospheric plasma source will be employed in this study for the texturing of crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, we produced the atmospheric plasma source and examined its basic properties. Then, using the prepared atmospheric plasma source, we performed the texturing process of crystalline silicon wafers. The results obtained from texturing processes employing the atmospheric plasma source and employing RIE were examined and compared with each other. The average reflectance of the specimens obtained from the atmospheric plasma texturing process was 7.88 %, while that of specimens obtained from the texturing process employing RIE was 8.04 %. Surface morphologies of textured wafers were examined and measured through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and similar shapes of reactive ion etched wafers were found. The Power Conversion Efficiencies (PCE) of the solar cells manufactured through each process were 16.97 % (atmospheric plasma texturing) and 16.29 % (RIE texturing).

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.65.4-65.4
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• 2017

The laboratory astrophysics is a new emerging field of basic sciences, and has tremendous discovery potentials. The laboratory astrophysics investigates the basic physical phenomena in the astrophysical objects in controlled and reproducible manners, which has become possible only recently due to the newly-established intense photon and ion beam facilities worldwide. In this presentation, we will introduce several promising ideas for laboratory astrophysics programs that might be readily incorporated in the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory X-ray Free Electron Laser (PAL-XFEL). For example, precise spectroscopic measurements using Electron Beam Ion Trap (EBIT) and intense X-ray photons from the PAL-XFEL can be performed to explore the fundamental processes in high energy X-ray phenomena in the visible universe. Besides, in many violent astrophysical events, the energy density of matter becomes so high that the traditional plasma physics description becomes inapplicable. Generation of such high-energy density states can be also be achieved by using the intense photon beams available from the PAL-XFEL.