• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.797-802
• /
• 2023

We prepared GZO (Ga₂O₃ : 5 wt %, ZnO : 95 wt %) thin film on glass substrate according to the substrate temperature using the pulsed laser deposition method and investigated electrical and optical properties of the thin film. Through the XRD measurements, their were confirmed that all GZO thin films grew preferentially in c-axis and the GZO thin film deposited at 300℃ showed the best crystallinity with a FWHM of 0.38°. As the substrate temperature increased from 150 to 300℃, the resistivity of GZO thin film tend to decrease, while the average transmittance in the visible light region was not significantly affected. The figure of merit of the GZO thin film deposited at 300℃ was 2.05×10⁴ Ω^-1·cm^-1, which was the best value, the resistivity and the average transmittance in the visible light region were 3.72 × 10^-4 Ω·cm and 87.71 %, respectively. In this study, it was found that GZO thin film is very promising material for transparent conducting thin film.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
• /
• 2000.11a
• /
• pp.3-4
• /
• 2000

Many researchers are interested in the synthesis and characterization of carbon nitride and diamond-like carbon (DLq because they show excellent mechanical properties such as low friction and high wear resistance and excellent electrical properties such as controllable electical resistivity and good field electron emission. We have deposited amorphous carbon nitride (a-C:N) thin films and DLC thin films by shielded arc ion plating (SAIP) and evaluated the structural and tribological properties. The application of appropriate negative bias on substrates is effective to increase the film hardness and wear resistance. This paper reports on the deposition and tribological OLC films in relation to the substrate bias voltage (Vs). films are compared with those of the OLC films. A high purity sintered graphite target was mounted on a cathode as a carbon source. Nitrogen or argon was introduced into a deposition chamber through each mass flow controller. After the initiation of an arc plasma at 60 A and 1 Pa, the target surface was heated and evaporated by the plasma. Carbon atoms and clusters evaporated from the target were ionized partially and reacted with activated nitrogen species, and a carbon nitride film was deposited onto a Si (100) substrate when we used nitrogen as a reactant gas. The surface of the growing film also reacted with activated nitrogen species. Carbon macropartic1es (0.1 -100 maicro-m) evaporated from the target at the same time were not ionized and did not react fully with nitrogen species. These macroparticles interfered with the formation of the carbon nitride film. Therefore we set a shielding plate made of stainless steel between the target and the substrate to trap the macropartic1es. This shielding method is very effective to prepare smooth a-CN films. We, therefore, call this method "shielded arc ion plating (SAIP)". For the deposition of DLC films we used argon instead of nitrogen. Films of about 150 nm in thickness were deposited onto Si substrates. Their structures, chemical compositions and chemical bonding states were analyzed by using X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy. Hardness of the films was measured with a nanointender interfaced with an atomic force microscope (AFM). A Berkovich-type diamond tip whose radius was less than 100 nm was used for the measurement. A force-displacement curve of each film was measured at a peak load force of 250 maicro-N. Load, hold and unload times for each indentation were 2.5, 0 and 2.5 s, respectively. Hardness of each film was determined from five force-displacement curves. Wear resistance of the films was analyzed as follows. First, each film surface was scanned with the diamond tip at a constant load force of 20 maicro-N. The tip scanning was repeated 30 times in a 1 urn-square region with 512 lines at a scanning rate of 2 um/ s. After this tip-scanning, the film surface was observed in the AFM mode at a constant force of 5 maicro-N with the same Berkovich-type tip. The hardness of a-CN films was less dependent on Vs. The hardness of the film deposited at Vs=O V in a nitrogen plasma was about 10 GPa and almost similar to that of Si. It slightly increased to 12 - 15 GPa when a bias voltage of -100 - -500 V was applied to the substrate with showing its maximum at Vs=-300 V. The film deposited at Vs=O V was least wear resistant which was consistent with its lowest hardness. The biased films became more wear resistant. Particularly the film deposited at Vs=-300 V showed remarkable wear resistance. Its wear depth was too shallow to be measured with AFM. On the other hand, the DLC film, deposited at Vs=-l00 V in an argon plasma, whose hardness was 35 GPa was obviously worn under the same wear test conditions. The a-C:N films show higher wear resistance than DLC films and are useful for wear resistant coatings on various mechanical and electronic parts.nic parts.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2012.08a
• /
• pp.154-155
• /
• 2012

The promise of nano-crystalites (nc) as a technological material, for applications including display backplane, and solar cells, may ultimately depend on tailoring their behavior through doping and crystallinity. Impurities can strongly modify electronic and optical properties of bulk and nc semiconductors. Highly doped dopant also effect structural properties (both grain size, crystal fraction) of nc-Si thin film. As discussed in several literatures, P atoms or radicals have the tendency to reside on the surface of nc. The P-radical segregation on the nano-grain surfaces that called self-purification may reduce the possibility of new nucleation because of the five-coordination of P. In addition, the P doping levels of ${\sim}2{\times}10^{21}\;at/cm^3$ is the solubility limitation of P in Si; the solubility of nc thin film should be smaller. Therefore, the non-activated P tends to segregate on the grain boundaries and the surface of nc. These mechanisms could prevent new nucleation on the existing grain surface. Therefore, most researches shown that highly doped nc-thin film by using conventional PECVD deposition system tended to have low crystallinity, where the formation energy of nucleation should be higher than the nc surface in the intrinsic materials. If the deposition technology that can make highly doped and simultaneously highly crystallized nc at low temperature, it can lead processes of next generation flexible devices. Recently, we are developing a novel CVD technology with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, named as neutral beam assisted CVD (NBaCVD), which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at low temperatures. During the formation of the nc-/pm-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. In the case of phosphorous doped Si thin films, the doping efficiency also increased as increasing the reflector bias (i.e. increasing NPB energy). At 330V of reflector bias, activation energy of the doped nc-Si thin film reduced as low as 0.001 eV. This means dopants are fully occupied as substitutional site, even though the Si thin film has nano-sized grain structure. And activated dopant concentration is recorded as high as up to 1020 #/$cm^3$ at very low process temperature (＜ $80^{\circ}C$) process without any post annealing. Theoretical solubility for the higher dopant concentration in Si thin film for order of 1020 #/$cm^3$ can be done only high temperature process or post annealing over $650^{\circ}C$. In general, as decreasing the grain size, the dopant binding energy increases as ratio of 1 of diameter of grain and the dopant hardly be activated. The highly doped nc-Si thin film by low-temperature NBaCVD process had smaller average grain size under 10 nm (measured by GIWAXS, GISAXS and TEM analysis), but achieved very higher activation of phosphorous dopant; NB energy sufficiently transports its energy to doping and crystallization even though without supplying additional thermal energy. TEM image shows that incubation layer does not formed between nc-Si film and SiO2 under later and highly crystallized nc-Si film is constructed with uniformly distributed nano-grains in polymorphous tissues. The nucleation should be start at the first layer on the SiO2 later, but it hardly growth to be cone-shaped micro-size grains. The nc-grain evenly embedded pm-Si thin film can be formatted by competition of the nucleation and the crystal growing, which depend on the NPB energies. In the evaluation of the light soaking degradation of photoconductivity, while conventional intrinsic and n-type doped a-Si thin films appeared typical degradation of photoconductivity, all of the nc-Si thin films processed by the NBaCVD show only a few % of degradation of it. From FTIR and RAMAN spectra, the energetic hydrogen NB atoms passivate nano-grain boundaries during the NBaCVD process because of the high diffusivity and chemical potential of hydrogen atoms.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.307-313
• /
• 2010

One-dimensional cubic phase silicon carbide nanowires (${\beta}$-SiC NWs) were efficiently synthesized by thermal chemical vapor deposition (TCVD) with mixtures containing Si powders and nickel chloride hexahydrate $(NiCl_2{\cdot}6H_2O)$ in an alumina boat with a carbon source of methane $(CH_4)$ gas. SEM images are shown that the growth temperature (T) of $1,300^{\circ}C$ is not enough to synthesize the SiC NWs owing to insufficient thermal energy for melting down a Si powder and decomposing the methane gas. However, the SiC NWs could be synthesized at T>$1,300^{\circ}C$ and the most efficient temperature for growth of SiC NWs is T=$1,400^{\circ}C$. The synthesized SiC NWs have the diameter with an average range between 50~150 nm. Raman spectra clearly revealed that the synthesized SiC NWs are forming of a cubic phase (${\beta}$-SiC). Two distinct peaks at 795 and $970 cm^{-1}$ in Raman spectra of the synthesized SiC NWs at T=$1,400^{\circ}C$ represent the TO and LO mode of the bulk ${\beta}$-SiC, respectively. XRD spectra are also supported to the Raman spectra resulting in the strongest (111) peaks at $2{\Theta}=35.7^{\circ}$, which is the (111) plane peak position of 3C-SiC. Moreover, the gas flow rate of 300 sccm for methane is the optimal condition for synthesis of a large amount of ${\beta}$-SiC NW without producing the amorphous carbon structure shown at a high methane flow rate of 800 sccm. TEM images are shown two kinds of the synthesized ${\beta}$-SiC NWs structures. One is shown the defect-free ${\beta}$-SiC NWs with a (111) interplane distance of 0.25 nm, and the other is the stacking-faulted ${\beta}$-SiC NWs. Also, TEM images exhibited that two distinct SiC NWs are uniformly covered with $SiO_2$ layer with a thickness of less 2 nm.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2012.08a
• /
• pp.400-401
• /
• 2012

그래핀(Graphene)은 열 전도도가 높고 전자 이동도(200 000 cm2V-1s-1)가 우수한 전기적 특성을 가지고 있어 전계 효과 트랜지스터(Field effect transistor; FET), 유기 전자 소자(Organic electronic device)와 광전자 소자(Optoelectronic device) 같은 반도체 소자에 응용 가능하다. 그러나 에너지 밴드 갭이 없기 때문에 소자의 전기적 특성이 제한되는 단점이 있다. 최근에는 아크 방출(Arc discharge method), 화학적 기상 증착법(Chemical vapor deposition; CVD), 이온-조사법(Ion-irradiation) 등을 이용한 이종원자(Hetero atom)도핑과 화학적 처리를 이용한 기능화(Functionalization) 등의 방법으로 그래핀을 도핑 후 에너지 밴드 갭을 형성시키는 연구 결과들이 보고된 바 있다. 그러나 이러한 방법들은 표면이 균일하지 않고, 그래핀에 많은 결함들이 발생한다는 단점이 있다. 이러한 단점을 극복하기 위해 자가조립 단층막(Self-assembled monolayers; SAMs)을 이용하여 이산화규소(Silicon oxide; SiO2) 기판을 기능화한 후 그 위에 그래핀을 전사하면 그래핀의 일함수를 쉽게 조절하여 소자의 전기적 특성을 최적화할 수 있다. SAMs는 그래핀과 SiO2 사이에 부착된 매우 얇고 안정적인 층으로 사용된 물질의 특성에 따라 운반자 농도나 도핑 유형, 디락 점(Dirac point)으로부터의 페르미 에너지 준위(Fermi energy level)를 조절할 수 있다[1-3]. 본 연구에서는 SAMs한 기판을 이용하여 그래핀의 도핑 효과를 확인하였다. CVD를 이용하여 균일한 그래핀을 합성하였고, 기판을 3-Aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES)와 Borane-Ammonia(Borazane)을 이용하여 각각 아민 기(Amine group; -NH2)와 보론 나이트라이드(Boron Nitride; BN)로 기능화한 후, 그 위에 합성한 그래핀을 전사하였다. 기판 위에 NH2와 BN이 SAMs 형태로 존재하는 것을 접촉각 측정(Contact angle measurement)을 통해 확인하였고, 그 결과 NH2와 BN에 의해 그래핀에 도핑 효과가 나타난 것을 라만 분광법(Raman spectroscopy)과 X-선 광전자 분광법(X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy: XPS)을 이용하여 확인하였다. 본 연구 결과는 안정적이면서 패턴이 가능하기 때문에 그래핀을 기반으로 하는 반도체 소자에 적용 가능할 것이라 예상된다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2015.08a
• /
• pp.157-157
• /
• 2015

Recently, the growing interest in organic microelectronic devices including OLEDs has led to an increasing amount of research into their many potential applications in the area of flexible electronic devices based on plastic substrates. However, these organic devices require a gas barrier coating to prevent the permeation of water and oxygen because organic materials are highly susceptible to water and oxygen. In particular, high efficiency OLEDs require an extremely low water vapor transition rate (WVTR) of $1{\times}10^{-6}g/m^2day$. The Key factor in high quality inorganic gas barrier formation for achieving the very low WVTR required ($1{\times}10^{-6}g/m^2day$) is the suppression of defect sites and gas diffusion pathways between grain boundaries. In this study NBAS process was introduced to deposit enhanced film density single gas barrier layer with a low WVTR. Fig. 1. shows a schematic illustration of the NBAS apparatus. The NBAS process was used for the $Al_2O_3$ nano-crystal structure films deposition, as shown in Fig. 1. The NBAS system is based on the conventional RF magnetron sputtering and it has the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma source and metal reflector. $Ar^+$ ion in the ECR plasma can be accelerated into the plasma sheath between the plasma and metal reflector, which are then neutralized mainly by Auger neutralization. The neutral beam energy is controlled by the metal reflector bias. The controllable neutral beam energy can continuously change crystalline structures from an amorphous phase to nanocrystal phase of various grain sizes. The $Al_2O_3$ films can be high film density by controllable Auger neutral beam energy. we developed $Al_2O_3$ high dense barrier layer using NBAS process. We can verified that NBAS process effect can lead to formation of high density nano-crystal structure barrier layer. As a result, Fig. 2. shows that the NBAS processed $Al_2O_3$ high dense barrier layer shows excellent WVTR property as a under $2{\times}10^{-5}g/m^2day$ in the single barrier layer of 100nm thickness. Therefore, the NBAS processed $Al_2O_3$ high dense barrier layer is very suitable in the high efficiency OLED application.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
• /
• v.10 no.4
• /
• pp.424-432
• /
• 2019

Planar BiVO₄ and 3 wt% Mo-doped BiVO₄ (abbreviated as Mo:BiVO₄) film were prepared by the facile spin-coating method on fluorine doped SnO₂(FTO) substrate in the same precursor solution including the Mo precursor in Mo:BiVO₄ film. After annealing at a high temperature of 450℃ for 30 min to improve crystallinity, the films exhibited the monoclinic crystalline phase and nanoporous architecture. Both films showed no remarkably discrepancy in crystalline or morphological properties. To investigate the effect of surface passivation exploring the Al₂O₃ layer, the ultra-thin Al₂O₃ layer with a thickness of approximately 2 nm was deposited on BiVO₄ film using the atomic layer deposition (ALD) method. No distinct morphological modification was observed for all prepared BiVO₄ and Mo:BiVO₄ films. Only slightly reduced nanopores were observed. Although both samples showed some reduction of light absorption in the visible wavelength after coating of Al₂O₃ layer, the Al₂O₃ coated BiVO₄ (Al₂O₃/BiVO₄) film exhibited enhanced photoelectrochemical performance in 0.5 M Na₂SO₄ solution (pH 6.5), having higher photocurrent density (0.91 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), briefly abbreviated as V_RHE) than BiVO₄ film (0.12 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V_RHE). Moreover, Al₂O₃ coating on the Mo:BiVO₄ film exhibited more enhanced photocurrent density (1.5 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V_RHE) than the Mo:BiVO₄ film (0.86 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V_RHE). To examine the reasons, capacitance measurement and Mott-Schottky analysis were conducted, revealing that the significant degradation of capacitance value was observed in both BiVO₄ film and Al₂O₃/Mo:BiVO₄ film, probably due to degraded capacitance by surface passivation. Furthermore, the flat-band potential (V_FB) was negatively shifted to about 200 mV while the electronic conductivities were enhanced by Al₂O₃ coating in both samples, contributing to the advancement of PEC performance by ultra-thin Al₂O₃ layer.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.1-16
• /
• 2008

Titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) is one of the most researched semiconductor oxides that has revolutionised technologies in the field of environmental purification and energy generation. It has found extensive applications in heterogenous photocatalysis for removing organic pollutants from air and water and also in hydrogen production from photocatalytic water-splitting. Its use is popular because of its low cost, low toxicity, high chemical and thermal stability. But one of the critical limitations of $TiO_2$ as photocatalyst is its poor response to visible light. Several attempts have been made to modify the surface and electronic structures of $TiO_2$ to enhance its activity in the visible light region such as noble metal deposition, metal ion loading, cationic and anionic doping and sensitisation. Most of the results improved photocatalytic performance under visible light irradiation. This paper attempts to review and update some of the information on the $TiO_2$ photocatalytic technology and its accomplishment towards visible light region.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.210-216
• /
• 2010

This paper investigates the dependence of a-Si:H/c-Si passivation and heterojunction solar cell performances on various cleaning processes of silicon wafers. It is observed that the passivation quality of a-Si:H thin-films on c-Si wafers depends highly on the initial H-termination properties of the wafer surface. The effective minority carrier lifetime (MCLT) of highly H-terminated wafer is beneficial for obtaining high quality passivation of a-Si:H/c-Si. The wafers passivated by p(n)-doped a-Si:H layers have low MCLT regardless of the initial H-termination quality. On the other hand, the MCLT of wafers incorporating intrinsic (i) a-Si:H as a passivation layer shows sensitive variation with initial cleaning and H-termination schemes. By applying the improved cleaning processes, we can obtain an MCLT of $100{\mu}sec$ after H-termination and above $600{\mu}sec$ after i a-Si:H thin film deposition. By adapting improved cleaning processes and by improving passivation and doped layers, we can fabricate a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with an active area conversion efficiency of 18.42%, which cells have an open circuit voltage of 0.670V, short circuit current of $37.31\;mA/cm^2$ and fill factor of 0.7374. These cells show more than 20% pseudo efficiency measured by Suns-$V_{oc}$ with an elimination of series resistance.

• Resources Recycling
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.3-15
• /
• 2008

Different toxic wastes are disposed of in our surroundings and these will ultimately threaten the existence of living organisms. Biohydrometallurgy, which includes the processes of bioleaching and bioremediation through the activities of microorganisms such as bacterial or fungal species, is a technology that has the potential to overcome many environmental problems at a reasonable economic cost. Bioleaching were carried out for dissolution of metals from different materials using most important metal mobilizing bacteria such as Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, Thiobacillus thiooxidans and Laptospirillum ferrooxidans. According to the reaction, bioleaching is parted as direct and indirect mechanism. In direct mechanism the bacteria oxidize the sulphides minerals by accepting electron and producing sulphuric acid in leaching media for their growth and metabolism. In other hand the indirect bioleaching is demonstrated as the oxidation of sulphides mineral by the oxidant like $Fe^{3+}$ produced by the iron oxidizing bacteria. Through this process, substantial amount of metal can be recovered from low-grade ores, concentrates, industrial wastes like sludge, tailings, fly ash, slag, electronic scrap, spent batteries and spent catalysts. This may be alternative technology to solve the high deposition of waste, which moves toward a healthy environment and green world.