• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.08a
• /
• pp.175-175
• /
• 2010

Transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films are widely used as transparent conducting thin film material for application in various fields such as solar cells, optoelectronic devices, heat mirrors and gas sensors, etc. Recently the increased utilization of many transparent electrodes has accelerated the development of inexpensive TCO materials. Indium tin oxide (ITO) film is well-known for TCO materials because of its low resistivity, but there is disadvantage that it is too expensive. ZnO film is cheaper than ITO but it shows thermally poor stability. On the contrary, antimony-doped tin oxide films (ATO) are more stable than TCO films such as Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) and ITO. Moreover, SnO2 film shows the best thermal and chemical stability, low cost and mechanical durability except the poor conductivity. However, annealing is proved to improve the conductivity of ATO film. Therefore, in this work, antimony (6 wt%) doped tin oxide films to improve the conductivity were deposited on 7059 corning glass by RF magnetron sputtering method for the application to transparent electrodes. In general, of all TCO films, glass is the most commonly selected substrate. However, for future development in flexible devices, glass is limited by its intrinsic inflexibility. In this study, we report the growth and properties of antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) films deposited on PES flexible substrate by using RF magnetron sputtering. The optimization process was performed varying the sputtering parameters, such as RF power and working pressure, and parameter effect on the structural, electrical and optical properties of the ATO films were investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.491-491
• /
• 2011

Transparent and flexible electronic devices that are light-weight, unbreakable, low power consumption, optically transparent, and mechanical flexible possibly have great potential in new applications of digital gadgets. Potential applications include transparent displays, heads-up display, sensor, and artificial skin. Recent reports on transparent and flexible field-effect transistors (tf-FETs) have focused on improving mechanical properties, optical transmittance, and performances. Most of tf-FET devices were fabricated with transparent oxide semiconductors which mechanical flexibility is limited. And, there have been no reports of transparent and flexible all-organic tf-FETs fabricated with organic semiconductor channel, gate dielectric, gate electrode, source/drain electrode, and encapsulation for sensor applications. We present the first demonstration of transparent, flexible all-organic sensor based on multifunctional organic FETs with organic semiconductor channel, gate dielectric, and electrodes having a capability of sensing infrared (IR) radiation and mechanical strain. The key component of our device design is to integrate the poly(vinylidene fluoride-triflouroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE) co-polymer directly into transparent and flexible OFETs as a multi-functional dielectric layer, which has both piezoelectric and pyroelectric properties. The P(VDF-TrFE) co-polumer gate dielectric has a high sensitivity to the wavelength regime over 800 nm. In particular, wavelength variations of P(VDF-TrFE) molecules coincide with wavelength range of IR radiation from human body (7000 nm ~14000 nm) so that the devices are highly sensitive with IR radiation of human body. Devices were examined by measuring IR light response at different powers. After that, we continued to measure IR response under various bending radius. AC (alternating current) gate biasing method was used to separate the response of direct pyroelectric gate dielectric and other electrical parameters such as mobility, capacitance, and contact resistance. Experiment results demonstrate that the tf-OTFT with high sensitivity to IR radiation can be applied for IR sensors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2009.06a
• /
• pp.13-13
• /
• 2009

We have investigated the fabrication and properties of bendable PZT film formed on plastic substrates for the application in flexible memory. These devices used the PZT active layer formed on $SiO_2/Si$ wafer by sol-gel method with optimized device layouts and Pt electrodes. After etching Pt/PZT/Pt layers, patterned by photolithography process. these layers were transferred on PET plastic substrate using elastomeric stamp. The level of performance that can be achieved approaches that of traditional PZT. devices on rigid bulk wafers.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.180-184
• /
• 2015

Stainless steel (SS) mesh was used to fabricate photoelectrode for flexible dye-seisitzed solar cells (DSSCs) in order to evaluate them as replacements for more expensive transparent conductive oxide(TCO). We fabricated the DSSCs with new type of photoelectrode, which consisted of flexible SS mesh coated with 100 nm thickness titanium (Ti) protective layer deposited using electron-beam deposition system. SS mesh DSSCs with protective layer showed higher efficiency than those without a protective layer. The best cell property in the present study showed the open circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.608 V, short-circuit current density (Jsc) of $5.73mA\;cm^{-2}$, fill factor (FF) of 65.13%, and efficiency (${\eta}$) of 2.44%. Compared with SS mesh based on DSSCs (1.66%), solar conversion of SS mesh based on DSSCs with protective layer improved about 47%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2012.02a
• /
• pp.597-597
• /
• 2012

A simple solution-based method is developed to deposit crystalline ultrathin (2 nm) nickel hydroxide on vertically grown ZnO nanowires to achieve high specific capacitance and long-term life for flexible and wearable energy storage devices. Ultrathin crystalline $Ni(OH)_2$ enables fast and reversible redox reaction to improve the specific capacitance by utilizing maximum number of active sites for the redox reaction while vertically grown ZnO nanowires on wearable textile fiber effectively transport electrolytes and shorten the ion diffusion path. Under the highly flexible state $Ni(OH)_2$ coated ZnO nanowires electrode shows a high specific capacitance of 2150 F/g (based on pristine $Ni(OH)_2$ in 1 M LiOH aqueous solution with negligible decrease in specific capacitance after 1000 cycles. The synthesized energy-storage electrodes are easy-to-assemble which can provide unprecedented design ingenuity for a variety of wearable and flexible electronic devices.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2012.05a
• /
• pp.69.2-69.2
• /
• 2012

Graphene films have a strong potential to replace indium tin oxide anodes in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), to date. However, the luminous efficiency of OLEDs with graphene anodes has been limited by a lack of efficient methods to improve the low work function and reduce the sheet resistance of graphene films to the levels required for electrodes. Here, we fabricate flexible OLEDs by modifying the graphene anode to have a high work function and low sheet resistance, and thus achieve extremely high luminous power efficiencies (37.2 lm/W in fluorescent OLEDs, 102.7 lm/W in phosphorescent OLEDs), which are significantly higher than those of optimized devices with an indium tin oxide anode (24.1 lm/W in fluorescent OLEDs, 85.6 lm/W in phosphorescent OLEDs). We also fabricate flexible white OLED lighting devices using the graphene anode. These results demonstrate the great potential of graphene anodes for use in a wide variety of high-performance flexible organic optoelectronics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
• /
• 2018.06a
• /
• pp.56-56
• /
• 2018

Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) have attracted attention due to their high electrical conductivity and optical transparency in the visible region. Consequently, TCOs have been widely used as electrode materials in various electronic devices such as flat panel displays and solar cells. Previous studies on TCOs focused on their electrical and optical performances; there have been numerous attempts to improve these properties, such as chemical doping and crystallinity enhancement. Recently, due to rapidly increasing demand for flexible electronics, the academic interest in the mechanical stability of materials has come to the fore as a major issue. In particular, long-term stability under bending is a crucial requirement for flexible electrodes; however, research on this feature is still in the nascent stage. Hydrogen-incorporated amorphous In-Sn-O (a-ITO) thin films were fabricated by introducing hydrogen gas during deposition. The hydrogen concentration in the film was determined by secondary ion mass spectrometry and was found to vary from $4.7{\times}10^{20}$ to $8.1{\times}10^{20}cm^{-3}$ with increasing $H_2$ flow rate. The mechanical stability of the a-ITO thin films dramatically improved because of hydrogen incorporation, without any observable degradation in their electrical or optical properties. With increasing hydrogen concentration, the compressive residual stress gradually decreased and the subgap absorption at around 3.1 eV was suppressed. Considering that the residual stress and subgap absorption mainly originated from defects, hydrogen may be a promising candidate for defect passivation in flexible electronics.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.29-33
• /
• 2012

In this study, we have investigated the structural and electrical characteristics of IZO thin films deposited under hydrogen atmosphere on flexible substrate for the OLED (organic light emitting diodes) devices. For this purpose, PES was used for flexible substrate and IZO thin films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering under hydrogen ambient gases (Ar, $Ar+H^2$) at room temperature. In order to investigate the influences of the hydrogen, the flow rate of hydrogen in argon mixing gas has been changed from 0.1sccm to 0.5sccm. All the samples show amorphous structure regardless of flow rate. The electrical resistivity of IZO films increased with increasing flow rate of $H^2$ under $Ar+H^2$. All the films showed the average transmittance over 85% in the visible range. The OLED device was fabricated with different IZO electrodes made by configuration of IZO/$\acute{a}$-NPD/DPVB/$Alq_3$/LiF/Al to elucidate the performance of IZO substrate. OLED devices with the amorphous-IZO (a-IZO) anode film show good current density-voltage-luminance characteristics. This suggests that flat surface roughness and low electrical resistivity of a-IZO anode film lead to more efficient anode material in OLED devices.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.359-364
• /
• 2009

This paper presents flexible electrocardiography(ECG) sensors using micro electro mechanical systems(MEMS) and flexible printed circuit(FPC) technology. By using FPC technology, ECG sensors which consisted of an outer hook-shaped electrode and an inner circular-shaped electrode were fabricated on the polyimide substrate. Thereafter, the bipolar ECG sensor was miniaturized using MEMS technology. The ECG measurement capability was examined by attaching the sensor to the human chest and wrist. Performance of the proposed sensors was then compared with ECG measured by commercial Ag/AgCl electrodes. It was verified that ECG could be measured using proposed sensors at only single body.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.479-479
• /
• 2011

Flexible inverters based on complementary thin-film transistor (CTFTs) are important because they have low power consumption and other advantages over single type TFT inverters. In addition, integrated CTFTs in flexible electronic circuits on low-cost, large area and mechanically flexible substrates have potentials in various applications such as radio-frequency identification tags (RFIDs), sensors, and backplanes for flexible displays. In this work, we introduce flexible complementary inverters using pentacene and amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) for the p-channel and n-channel, respectively. The CTFTs were fabricated on polyimide (PI) substrate. Firstly, a thin poly-4-vinyl phenol (PVP) layer was spin coated on PI substrate to make a smooth surface with rms surface roughness of 0.3 nm, which was required to grow high quality IGZO layers. Then, Ni gate electrode was deposited on the PVP layer by e-beam evaporator. 400-nm-thick PVP and 20-nm-thick ALD Al2O3 dielectric was deposited in sequence as a double gate dielectric layer for high flexibility and low leakage current. Then, IGZO and pentacene semiconductor layers were deposited by rf sputter and thermal evaporator, respectively, using shadow masks. Finally, Al and Au source/drain electrodes of 70 nm were respectively deposited on each semiconductor layer using shadow masks by thermal evaporator. Basic electrical characteristics of individual transistors and the whole CTFTs were measured by a semiconductor parameter analyzer (HP4145B, Agilent Technologies) at room temperature in the dark. Performance of those devices then was measured under static and dynamic mechanical deformation. Effects of cyclic bending were also examined. The voltage transfer characteristics (Vout- Vin) and voltage gain (-dVout/dVin) of flexible inverter circuit were analyzed and the effects of mechanical bending will be discussed in detail.