• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.26 no.8
• /
• pp.417-421
• /
• 2016

We improve the energy conversion efficiency (ECE) of a dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) by preparing a working electrode (WE) with localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) by inducing Au thin films with thickness of 0.0 to 5.0 nm, deposited via sputtering. Field emission scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were used to characterize the microstructure of the blocking layer (BL) of the Au thin films. Micro-Raman measurement was employed to confirm the LSPR effect, and a solar simulator and potentiostat were used to evaluate the photovoltaic properties, including the impedance and the I-V of the DSSC of the Au thin films. The results of the microstructural analysis confirmed that nano-sized Au agglomerates were present at certain thicknesses. The photovoltaic results show that the ECE reached a value of 5.34% with a 1-nm thick-Au thin film compared to the value of 5.15 % without the Au thin film. This improvement was a result of the increase in the LSPR of the $TiO_2$ layer that resulted from the Au thin film coating. Our results imply that the ECE of a DSSC may be improved by coating with a proper thickness of Au thin film on the BL.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2009.10a
• /
• pp.687-690
• /
• 2009

It has been recently reported that nano-sized MgO single crystal powders emit ultraviolet by stimulation of electrons under vacuum condition. Therefore, in this study, nano-crystalline MgO powders were applied to a xenon plasma flat fluorescent lamp for LCD backlight to improve emission efficiency of the lamp by help of extra ultraviolet from nano-MgO. For comparison with nano-crystalline MgO powders, MgO nano-thin film was applied directly on phosphors inside a lamp panel through e-beam evaporation The luminance and efficiency of FFL with an addition of MgO nano-crystal powders on phosphors were improved by around 20%. Application of MgO thin film to phosphors worsened the emission characteristics of FFLs, even rather than FFL without MgO. The reason came from insufficient stimulation of phosphors by UV, crystallinity of MgO, and low secondary electron coefficient.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.186-189
• /
• 2010

Nano-sized MgO single crystal powders have recently been reported to emit ultraviolet by stimulation of electrons in a vacuum. In this study, nanocrystalline MgO powders were applied to a xenon plasma flat fluorescent lamp (FFL) for a liquid crystal display backlight to improve its emission efficiency through the extra ultraviolet from the nano-MgO crystals. For comparison, a MgO nano-thin film was applied directly on the phosphors inside a lamp panel through e-beam evaporation. Adding MgO nano-crystal powders to the phosphors improved the luminance and efficiency of FFLs by around 20% and MgO nano-crystal coverage of 40% of the phosphor provided the best FFL emission characteristics; however, application of MgO thin film to the phosphors degraded the emission characteristics, even compared to FFLs without MgO. This was due to insufficient ultraviolet stimulation of the phosphors and the crystallinity and low secondary electron coefficient of the MgO.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
• /
• v.53 no.3
• /
• pp.109-115
• /
• 2020

In this study, polycrystalline diamond was synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Diamond films were deposited on a-plane sapphire substrates while changing the concentration of methane for hydrogen (CH₄/H₂), and the concentrations of methane were 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3 and 4 vol%, respectively. Crystallinity and nucleation density according to changes in methane concentration were investigated. At this time, the discharge power, vacuum pressure, and deposition time were kept constant. In order to deposit polycrystalline diamond, the sapphire substrate was etched with sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide (ratio 3:7), and the sapphire surface was polished for 30 minutes with 100 nm-sized nanodiamond particles. The deposited diamond thin film was analyzed by a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a Raman spectra, Atomic force microscope (AFM) and an X-ray diffractometer (XRD). By controlling the ratio of methane to hydrogen and performing appropriate pre-treatment conditions, a polycrystalline diamond thin film having excellent crystallinity and nucleation density was obtained.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2007.08b
• /
• pp.1119-1120
• /
• 2007

Nano-sized metal patterns were successfully fabricated on flexible PET substrate using nanoimprint lithography. 70nm line and space PMMA resist pattern was formed on PET substrate without residual layer by 'artial filling effect' and 20nm thin Cr metal layer was deposited by e-beam evaporation. Then, PMMA resist was selectively removed by acetone and 70nm narrow Cr pattern was formed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
• /
• 2007.04a
• /
• pp.24-25
• /
• 2007

Nano-sized metal patterns were successfully fabricated on flexible PET substrate using nanoimprint lithography. 70nm line and space PMMA resist pattern was formed on PET substrate without residual layer by "partial filling effect' and 20nm thin Cr metal layer was deposited by e-beam evaporation. Then, PMMA resist was selectively removed by acetone and 70nm narrow Cr pattern was formed.

• 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.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
• /
• v.10 no.6
• /
• pp.451-460
• /
• 2019

Thin film composite membranes incorporated with nano-sized hydrophilic zeolite -A were successfully prepared via interfacial polymerization (IP) on porous blend PES/PAN support for water desalination. The thin film nanocomposite membranes were characterized by SEM, contact angle and performance test with 7000 ppm NaCl solution at 7bar. The results showed that the optimum zeolite loading amount was determined to be 0.1wt% with permeate flux 29LMH.NaCl rejection was improved from 69% to 92% compared to the pristine polyamide membrane where the modified PA surface was more selective than that of the pristine PA. In addition, there was no significant change in the permeate flux of the thin film nanocomposite membrane compared with that of the pristine PA in spite of the formation of the dense polyamide layer. The stability of the polyamide layer was investigated for 15 days and the optimized membrane presented the highest durability and stability.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.173-176
• /
• 2014

We have investigated the seed layer formation of front side contact using the inkjet printing process. Conductive silver ink was printed on textured Si wafers with 80 nm thick $SiN_x$ anti reflection coating (ARC) layers and thickened by light induced plating (LIP). The inkjet printable sliver inks were specifically formulated for inkjet printing on these substrates. Also, a novel method to prepare nano-sized glass frits by the sol-gel process with particle sizes around 5 nm is presented. Furthermore, dispersion stability of the formulated ink was measured using a Turbiscan. By implementing these glass frits, it was found that a continuous and uniform seed layer with a line width of $40{\mu}m$ could be formed by a inkjet printing process. We also investigated the contact resistance between the front contact and emitter using the transfer length model (TLM). On an emitter with the sheet resistance of $60{\Omega}/sq$, a specific contact resistance (${\rho}_c$) below $10m{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ could be achieved at a peak firing temperature around $700^{\circ}C$. In addition, the correlation between the contact resistance and interface microstructures were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We found that the added glass particles act as a very effective fire through agent, and Ag crystallites are formed along the interface glass layer.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Crystal Growth Conference
• /
• 2000.06a
• /
• pp.127-142
• /
• 2000

The charged cluster model states that chemical vapor deposition (CVD) begins with gas phase nucleation of charged clusters followed by cluster deposition on a substrate surface to form a thin film. A two-chambered CVD system, separated by a 1-mm orifice, was used to study gold deposition by thermal evaporation in order to determine if the CCM applies in this case. At a filament temperature of 1523 and 1773 K, the presence of nano-meter sized gold clusters was found to be positive and the cluster size and size distribution increased with increasing temperature. Small clusters were found to be amorphous and they combined with clusters already deposited on a substrate surface to form larger amorphous clusters on the surface. This work revealed that gold thin films deposited on a mica surface are the result of the sticking of 4-10 nm clusters. The topography of these films was similar to those reported previously under similar conditions.