• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2010.08a
• /
• pp.176-176
• /
• 2010

One of the critical issues for applications of flexible organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) for flexible electronic systems is the electrical stabilities of the OTFT devices, including variation of the current on/off ratio (Ion/Ioff), leakage current, threshold voltage, and hysteresis under repetitive mechanical deformation. In particular, repetitive mechanical deformation accelerates the degradation of device performance at the ambient environment. In this work, electrical stability of the pentacene organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) employing multi-stack hybrid encapsulation layers was investigated under mechanical cyclic bending. Flexible bottom-gated pentacene-based OTFTs fabricated on flexible polyimide substrate with poly-4-vinyl phenol (PVP) dielectric as a gate dielectric were encapsulated by the plasma-deposited organic layer and atomic-layer-deposited inorganic layer. For cyclic bending experiment of flexible OTFTs, the devices were cyclically bent up to 105 times with 5mm bending radius. In the most of the devices after 105 times of bending cycles, the off-current of the OTFT with no encapsulation layers was quickly increased due to increases in the conductivity of the pentacene caused by doping effects from $O_2$ and $H_2O$ in the atmosphere, which leads to decrease in the Ion/Ioff and increase in the hysteresis. With encapsulation layers, however, the electrical stabilities of the OTFTs were improved significantly. In particular, the OTFTs with multi-stack hybrid encapsulation layer showed the best electrical stabilities up to the bending cycles of $10^5$ times compared to the devices with single organic encapsulation layer. Changes in electrical properties of cyclically bent OTFTs with encapsulation layers will be discussed in detail.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
• /
• v.47 no.6
• /
• pp.97-104
• /
• 2010

In this paper, ICT (in circuit tester) inspection system and inspection algorithm is proposed and detects whether inferiority exists or not in the mounted device on the flexible PCB in cell phones or mobile display devices. The system is composed of PD (pin-driver) and GGM (ground guarding method). The structural characteristics of these flexible PCB are analyzed, which is needed to input or output the test signal. Test signal to investigate the characteristics of passive components is generated using modified circuit diagram and proposed inspection algorithm. PM (pin-map) is decided on the basis of circuit diagram and has the information about the kind of test signal to be applied and the pad number for the test signal to be connected. PD is designed to load a proper test signal for a specific pad and is adjusted according to PM so that the reconstructed circuit has minimum node and mash. The proposed ICT inspection system is realized using PD and GGM. Using the system, an experiment for each passive component is done to investigate the measurement accuracy of the developed system and an experiment for real flexible PCB model is done to verity the effectiveness of the system.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
• /
• v.30 no.4
• /
• pp.105-111
• /
• 2023

Electronic devices have been evolved to be mechanically flexible that can be endured repetitive deformation. This evolution emphasizes the importance of long-term reliability in metal wiring connecting electronic components, especially under bending fatigue in compressed environments. This study investigated methods to enhance adhesion between copper (Cu) and polyimide (PI) substrates, aiming to improve the reliability of copper wiring under such conditions. We applied oxygen plasma treatment and introduced a chromium (Cr) adhesion layer to the polyimide substrate. Our findings revealed that these adhesion enhancement methods significantly affect compression fatigue behavior. Notably, the chromium adhesion layer, while showing weaker fatigue characteristics at 1.5% strain, demonstrated superior performance at 2.0% strain with no delamination, outperforming other methods. These results offer valuable insights for improving the reliability of flexible electronic devices, including reducing crack occurrence and enhancing fatigue resistance in their typical usage environments.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
• /
• v.20 no.12
• /
• pp.79-85
• /
• 2022

Recently, a smartphone manufactured on a flexible substrate has been released as an electronic device, and research on a stretchable electronic device is in progress. In this paper, a silicon-based stretchable material is made and used as a substrate to implement and evaluate an optical sensor device using oxide semiconductor. To this end, a substrate that stretches well at room temperature was made using a silicone-based solution rubber, and the elongation of 350% of the material was confirmed, and optical properties such as reflectivity, transmittance, and absorbance were measured. Next, since the surface of these materials is hydrophobic, oxygen-based plasma surface treatment was performed to clean the surface and change the surface to hydrophilicity. After depositing an AZO-based oxide film with vacuum equipment, an Ag electrode was formed using a cotton swab or a metal mast to complete the photosensor. The optoelectronic device analyzed the change in current according to the voltage when light was irradiated and when it was not, and the photocurrent caused by light was observed. In addition, the effect of the optical sensor according to the folding was additionally tested using a bending machine. In the future, we plan to intensively study folding (bending) and stretching optical devices by forming stretchable semiconductor materials and electrodes on stretchable substrates.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2022

Recently, semiconductor devices have been used in many fields owing to various applications of mobile electronics, wearable and flexible devices and substrates. During the semiconductor chip bonding process, the mismatch of coefficient of therm al expansion (CTE) between the substrate and the solder, and the excessive heat applied to the entire substrate and components affect the performance and reliability of the device. These problems can cause warpage and deterioration of long-term reliability of the electronic packages. In order to improve these issues, many studies on low-melting temperature solders, which is capable of performing a low-temperature process, have been actively conducted. Among the various low-melting temperature solders, such as Sn-Bi and Sn-In, Sn-58Bi solder is attracting attention as a promising low-temperature solder because of its advantages such as high yield strength, moderate mechanical property, and low cost. However, due to the high brittleness of Bi, improvement of the Sn-Bi solder is needed. In this review paper, recent research trends to improve the mechanical properties of Sn-Bi solder by adding trace elements or particles were introduced and compared.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.9-14
• /
• 2022

In this study, we propose a method for moving a device such as a flexible air sculpture while stably maintaining the user's desired posture. To accomplish this, a robot system with a structure of a mobile robot capable of running according to a given trajectory was studied by applying the PI algorithm and horizontal maintenance posture control using IMU. The air sculptures used in this study often use thin strings in a fixed posture. Another method is to put a load on the center of gravity to maintain the posture, and it is a system with flexibility because it uses air pressure. It is expected that these structures can achieve various results by combining flexible structures and mobile robots through the convergence process of digital sensor technology. In this study, posture control was performed by fusion of the driving technology of AGV(Automatic Guided Vehicle),, a field of robot, and technologies applying various sensors. For verification, the given performance evaluation was performed through an accredited certification test, and its validity was verified through an experiment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.31 no.11
• /
• pp.969-974
• /
• 2014

Previously fabricated electronic devices were used for vacuum manufacturing processes such as conventional semiconductor manufacturing. However, they are difficult to apply to continuous processes such as roll-to-roll printing, which results in very high device manufacturing and processing costs. Therefore, many developers have been interested in applying continuous processes to contact printing or noncontact printing technologies and they proposed various continuous printing techniques instead of conventional batch coating. In this paper, we proposed improved gravure offset printing process as one of the contact printing technique. We used etching pattern geometry with soft core blanket roll for printing of ultra fine line below the 10um.Using this technique we obtained flexible metal grid mesh film as transparent conductive film.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.9-19
• /
• 2017

Useful continuous sensing applications are increasingly emerging as a new class of mobile applications. Meanwhile, open, multi-use sensor devices are newly adopted beyond smartphones, and provide huge opportunities to expand potential application categories. In this upcoming environment, uncoordinated use of sensor devices would cause severe imbalance in power consumption of devices, and thus result in early shutdown of some sensing applications depending on power-hungry devices. In this paper, we propose EnergyCordy, a novel inter-device energy use coordination system; with a system-wide holistic view, it coordinates the energy use of concurrent sensing applications over multiple sensor devices. As its key approach, we propose a relaxed sensor association; it decouples the energy use of an application from specific sensor devices leveraging multiple context inference alternatives, allowing flexible energy coordination at runtime. We demonstrated the effectiveness of EnergyCordy by developing multiple example applications over custom-designed wearable senor devices. We show that EnergyCordy effectively coordinates the power usage of concurrent sensing applications over multiple devices and prevent undesired early shutdown of applications.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
• /
• 1993.10a
• /
• pp.307-315
• /
• 1993

A direct draft measurement system was developed based on the swingle tree- the rear component of the single-animal harnessing (or yoking) system . The prototype was made from a tube, on which four strain gages were attached. The pull of the draft animal through the flexible pull chains or ropes causes the beam to bend, The bending strain is sensed by the strain gages and the bridge converts this to a voltage signal. Counterweights keep the tube correctly oriented if the angle of pull changes , while end bearing follow the variations in the angle of pull. Hence, the voltage output is proportional to the draft. the device has highly linear response, acceptable sensitivity negligible error and hysteresis. It is suitable for electronic data acquisition, non-intrusive , easy to attach and detach and is reasonably priced.

• Vacuum Magazine
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.19-23
• /
• 2014

Transparent and top emission organic light-emitting device (OLEDs) are the important issues in realizing new display applications such as see-through electronic displays, and flexible displays. The cathode of the transparent and top emission OLEDs should be transparent in the visible light and should not give any damage to the underlying organic layers, in addition to its intrinsic role of injecting electrons into the organic layers. Several authors have investigated the transparent conducting oxide films prepared by sputtering methods. They have introduced the sophisticated sputtering process for reducing the damages. Other groups have developed thermally evaporated transparent cathodes which are believed to be damage free without causing any permanent defect to the organic layers. This review focuses on the vacuum evaporated damage free transparent cathodes.