• Elastomers and Composites
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.79-85
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• 2002

Ethyl-branched polyethylene [PE(2)] containing 2mole% ethyl branch and three ethylene-propylene rubbers (EPR's) having the same ethylene(E)-propylene(P) molar ratio(E/P=50/50) with different stereoregularity, that is, random EPR (r-EPR), alternating-EPR (alt-EPR) and isotactic-alternating-EPR (iso-alt-EPR) were mixed for the investigation or their properties depending on the stereoregularity. Crystallinity of the prepared blends decreased with increasing content of amorphous EPR because of a decrease in both the degree of annealing and kinetics of diffusion of the crystallizable polymer content. With blend composition, crystallinity was reduced with the stereoregularity in EPR. The thermodynamic interaction parameter(x) for the three blend systems approximately equals to zero near the melting point. These systems were determined to be miscible on a molecular scale near or above the crystalline melting point or the crystalline PE(2). From the measurement of $T_m$ vs. $T_c$, the behavior of PE(2) is mainly due to a diluent effect of EPR component. The spherulite size measured by small angle light scattering (SALS) technique depended upon blend composition, and stereoregularity of EPR. The size of spherulite was enlarged with the content of rubbery EPR and the decrease of stereoregularity in EPR.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.502-507
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• 2014

Recently, improvement in the conversion efficiency of silicon-based solar cells has been achieved by decreasing emitter doping concentration, because the lightly doped emitter can effectively prevent the recombination of electrons and holes generated by solar light irradiation. This type of emitter is very thin due to the low doping concentration, thus conductive materials (i.e., silver) used for front electrodes can easily penetrate the emitter during a firing process because of their large diffusivity in silicon. This results in junction leakage currents which might reduce cell efficiencies. In this study, $Al_2O_3$-coated Ag powders were synthesized by an ultrasonic spray pyrolysis method and applied to the conductive materials of the front electrode to control the junction leakage current. The $Al_2O_3$ shell obstructs the Ag diffusion into the emitter during the firing process. The powder is spherical with a core-shell structure and the thickness of the $Al_2O_3$ shell is tens of nanometers. Solar cells were fabricated using pure Ag powders or the $Al_2O_3$-coated Ag powder as front electrode materials, and the conversion efficiency and junction leakage current were compared to investigate the role of the $Al_2O_3$ shell during the firing processes.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.71-77
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• 2015

Ultrasonic imprinting is a micropattern replication technology for a thermoplastic polymer surface that uses ultrasonic vibration energy; it has the advantages of a short cycle time and low energy consumption. Recently, ultrasonic imprinting has been further developed to extend its functionality: (i) selective ultrasonic imprinting using mask films and (ii) repetitive ultrasonic imprinting for composite pattern development. In this study, selective ultrasonic imprinting was combined with repetitive imprinting in order to replicate versatile micropatterns. For this purpose, a repetitive imprinting technology was further extended to utilize mask films, which enabled versatile micropatterns to be replicated using a single mold with micro-prism patterns. The replicated hybrid micropatterns were optically evaluated through laser light images, which showed that versatile optical diffusion characteristics can be obtained from the hybrid micropatterns.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.90.1-90.1
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• 2010

Due to the rapidly diminishing energy sources and higher energy production cost, the interest in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has been increasing dramatically in recent years. A typical DSSC is constructed of wide band gap semiconductor electrode such as $TiO_2$ or ZnO that are anchored by light-harvesting sensitizer dyes and surrounded by a liquid electrolyte with a iodide ion/triiodide ion redox couple. DSSCs based on one-dimensional nano-structures, such as ZnO nanorods, have been recently attracting increasing attention due to their excellent electrical conductivity, high optical transmittance, diverse and abundant configurations, direct band gap, absence of toxicity, large exiton binding energy, etc. However, solar-to-electrical conversion performances of DSSCs composed of ZnO n-type photo electrode compared with that of $TiO_2$ are not satisfactory. An important reason for the low photovoltaic performance is the dissolution of $Zn^{2+}$ by the adsorption of acidic dye followed by the formation of agglomerates with dye molecules which could block the I-diffusion pathway into the dye molecule on the ZnO surface. In this paper, we prepared the DSSC with the ZnO electrode using the chemical bath deposition (CBD) method under low temperature condition (< $100^{\circ}C$). It was demonstrated that the ZnO seed layers played an important role on the formation of the ZnO nanostructures using CBD. To achieve truly low-temperature growth of the ZnO nanostructures on the substrates, a two-step method was developed and optimized in the present work. Firstly, ZnO seed layer was prepared on the FTO substrate through the spin-coating method. Secondly, the deposited ZnO seed substrate was immersed into an aqueous solution of 0.25M zinc nitrate hexahydrate and 0.25M hexamethylenetetramine at $90^{\circ}C$ for hydrothermal reaction several times.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.181-181
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• 2012

Direct synthesis of graphene using a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has been considered a facile way to produce large-area and uniform graphene film, which is an accessible method from an application standpoint. Hence, their fundamental understanding is highly required. Unfortunately, the CVD growth mechanism of graphene on Cu remains elusive and controversial. Here, we present the evidences for two different growth modes of graphene on Cu investigated by varying carbon feedstock (C2H2 and CH4) and working pressure. The number of uniform graphene layer grown by C2H2 increased with increasing its injection time. A combined secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) study revealed a carbon-diffused Cu layer created below surface region of Cu substrate with the expansion of Cu lattice. The graphene on Cu was grown by the diffusion and precipitation mode not by the surface adsorption mode, because similar results were observed in graphene/Ni system. The carbon-diffused Cu layer was also observed after graphene growth under high CH4 pressure. Based on various previous results and ours, we have successfully found that there are two selective growth modes for graphene on Cu substrate, and a desired mode can be chosen by tuning working pressure corresponding to the kind of carbon feedstock. We believe that this finding will shed light on high quality graphene growth and its multifaceted applications.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.416-416
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• 2016

Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskite solar cells have received attention because it has a number of advantages with excellent light harvesting, high carrier mobility, and facile solution processability and also recorded recently power conversion efficiency (PCEs) of over 20%. The major issue on perovskite solar cells have been reached the limit of small area laboratory scale devices produced using fabrication techniques such as spin coating and physical vapor deposition which are incompatible with low-cost and large area fabrication of perovskite solar cells using printing and coating techniques. To solution these problems, we have investigated the feasibility of achieving fully printable perovskite solar cells by the blade-coating technique. The blade-coating fabrication has been widely used to fabricate organic solar cells (OSCs) and is proven to be a simple, environment-friendly, and low-cost method for the solution-processed photovoltaic. Moreover, the film morphology control in the blade-coating method is much easier than the spray coating and roll-to-roll printing; high-quality photoactive layers with controllable thickness can be performed by using a precisely polished blade with low surface roughness and coating gap control between blade and coating substrate[1]. In order to fabricate perovskite devices with good efficiency, one of the main factors in printed electronic processing is the fabrication of thin films with controlled morphology, high surface coverage and minimum pinholes for high performance, printed thin film perovskite solar cells. Charge dissociation efficiency, charge transport and diffusion length of charge species are dependent on the crystallinity of the film [2]. We fabricated the printed perovskite solar cells with large area and flexible by the bar-coating. The morphology of printed film could be closely related with the condition of the bar-coating technique such as coating speed, concentration and amount of solution, drying condition, and suitable film thickness was also studied by using the optical analysis with SEM. Electrical performance of printed devices is gives hysteresis and efficiency distribution.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.427-427
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• 2016

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite have attracted significant attention as a new revolutionary light absorber for photovoltaic device due to its remarkable characteristics such as long charge diffusion lengths (100-1000nm), low recombination rate, and high extinction coefficient. Recently, power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cell is above 20% that is approached to crystalline silicon solar cells. Planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells have simple device structure and can be fabricated low temperature process due to absence of mesoporous scaffold that should be annealed over 500 oC. However, in the planar structure, controlling perovskite film qualities such as crystallinity and coverage is important for high performances. Those controlling methods in one-step deposition have been reported such as adding additive, solvent-engineering, using anti-solvent, for pin-hole free perovskite layer to reduce shunting paths connecting between electron transport layer and hole transport layer. Here, we studied the effect of alkali metal halide to control the fabrication process of perovskite film. During the morphology determination step, alkali metal halides can affect film morphologies by intercalating with PbI2 layer and reducing $CH3NH3PbI3{\cdot}DMF$ intermediate phase resulting in needle shape morphology. As types of alkali metal ions, the diverse grain sizes of film were observed due to different crystallization rate depending on the size of alkali metal ions. The pin-hole free perovskite film was obtained with this method, and the resulting perovskite solar cells showed higher performance as > 10% of power conversion efficiency in large size perovskite solar cell as $5{\times}5cm$. X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) are analyzed to prove the mechanism of perovskite film formation with alkali metal halides.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.297.2-297.2
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• 2016

Photoacoustic generation of ultrasound is an effective approach for development of high-frequency and high-amplitude ultrasound transmitters. This requires an efficient energy converter from optical input to acoustic output. For such photoacoustic conversion, various light-absorbing materials have been used such as metallic coating, dye-doped polymer composite, and nanostructure composite. These transmitters absorb laser pulses with 5-10 ns widths for generation of tens-of-MHz frequency ultrasound. The short optical pulse leads to rapid heating of the irradiated region and therefore fast thermal expansion before significant heat diffusion occurs to the surrounding. In this purpose, nanocomposite thin films containing gold nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), or carbon nanofibers have been recently proposed for high optical absorption, efficient thermoacosutic transfer, and mechanical robustness. These properties are necessary to produce a high-amplitude ultrasonic output under a low-energy optical input. Here, we investigate carbon nanotube (CNT)-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite transmitters and their nanostructure-originated characteristics enabling extraordinary energy conversion. We explain a thermoelastic energy conversion mechanism within the nanocomposite and examine nanostructures by using a scanning electron microscopy. Then, we measure laser-induced damage threshold of the transmitters against pulsed laser ablation. Particularly, laser-induced damage threshold has been largely overlooked so far in the development of photoacoustic transmitters. Higher damage threshold means that transmitters can withstand optical irradiation with higher laser energy and produce higher pressure output proportional to such optical input. We discuss an optimal design of CNT-PDMS composite transmitter for high-amplitude pressure generation (e.g. focused ultrasound transmitter) useful for therapeutic applications. It is fabricated using a focal structure (spherically concave substrate) that is coated with a CNT-PDMS composite layer. We also introduce some application examples of the high-amplitude focused transmitter based on the CNT-PDMS composite film.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.18-29
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• 2015

The purposes of this research and development are as follows: first, to provide pleasant driving environments inside tunnels; second, to improve the current illumination environments lacking in diffusion luminance meters to meet tunnel lighting standards; and, third, to reduce the consumption of tunnel lighting energy accounting for approximately 65% of tunnel maintenance costs because of inadequate visual environments and tunnel operations. Further details are listed below. Firstly, an image luminance meter for tunnels that can implement the L20-method which is a tunnel luminance method that follows the international standards of CIE88, which was developed in order to improve and change the existing illumination-based tunnel lighting operation system to a luminance-based system. (The margin of error of below 5% according to the results of a test by an authorized agency and field test). Secondly, early illumination control is possible since the lighting control system that can be operated based on luminance enables interlocking control of the inside and outside of a tunnel using ethernet communication. Thirdly, guidelines for field application of the system are proposed. In addition, the luminance inducers of tunnels are found and the reflexibility of each facility that may reduce luminance of the boundaries is also proposed. Fourthly, as a result of a test bed, power consumption of luminance-based lighting operations decreased by 15.6% compared to illumination-based operations. Applying the feedback controls and maintenance factors of internal/external luminance meters, it reduced by 36.4%. Therefore, we became able to provide a luminance-based lighting operation system that complies with tunnel lighting design standards and provides a visual environment for drivers.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.370-376
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• 2003

Poly(DL-lactide-co-glycolide) nanoparticles were prepared by the modified spontaneous emulsification solvent diffusion method. Polymer solution was prepared by two water-soluble organic solvents, such as ethanol and acetone. Because of its biocompatible nature, PEG-PPG diblock copolymer was used as surfactant and stabilizer. The influence of several preparative variables on the nanoparticle formation, such as type and concentration of stabilizing agent, stirring methods, water/oil phase ratio and polymer concentration were investigated in order to control and optimize the process. After preparation of nanoparticles, particle size and distribution were evaluated by the light scattering particle analyzer. As results, the particle size was 50-200 nm and dispersibility was monodisperse. It was found that the appropriate selections of binary solvent mixtures and polymeric concentrations in both organic and aqueous phases could provide a good yield and favorable physical properties of PLGA nanoparticles.