• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1994.07a
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• pp.72-75
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• 1994

In this paper, a novel method to figure out the relative residual stress distribution along the depth of silicon diaphragms is presented Cantilevers with various thickness are fabricated by the time controlled etching method using EPW as an etchant. The boron concentration along the depth of the cantilevers is obtained by the TSUPREM IV simulation, and the etching time to get the proper thickness is calculated. By measuring deflections of the p+ silicon cantilevers the stress profile along the depth of diaphragm is calculated. The obtained stress profile is reasonable and useful to expect the deflection of cantilevers and the buckling of diaphragms.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.34-41
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• 1979

In the work reported here we have sputtered from silicon targets in argon-silane mixtures using undoped n-type and p-type targets. Doped films have been produced, but the doping efficiency is extremely low. It appears that the dopant atoms are able to satisfy their natural valencies and are therefore not electrically active. Infra-red absorption spectroscopy has been used to establish the hydrogen bonding in the films. No correlation has been found between the nature of the hydrogen bonding in the film and the electrical properties.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.105-112
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• 2022

Copper (Cu)-based catalysts have been widely used in a methanol steam reforming (MSR) reaction for hydrogen production for air-independent propulsion (AIP) applications and their good catalytic activities have attracted much attention. However, the agglomeration of the catalytic active site Cu causes deteriorating the catalytic performance and suppression of Cu agglomeration is a crucial issue in the AIP applications that the MSR system is typically operated at 250-300℃ for a long time. R. Sakai et al. recently showed a computational study on the anchoring effect that reduces an agglomeration of active sites by doping in a supporter. In order to present the anchoring effect on 𝛾-Al₂O₃ supported Cu-based catalysts, in this study, the adsorption energies of Cu on X-doped (X=ruthenium, phosphorus, silicon) 𝛾-Al₂O₃ were calculated and Cu adsorption energy decreased due to a change of the electronic structure originated from doping, thereby proving the anchoring effect.

• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.67-74
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• 2015

Sensing characteristics for porous smart particle based on DBR smart particles were reported. Optically encoded porous silicon smart particles were successfully fabricated from the free-standing porous silicon thin films using ultrasono-method. DBR PSi was prepared by an electrochemical etch of heavily doped $p^{++}$-type silicon wafer. DBR PSi was prepared by using a periodic pseudo-square wave current. The surface-modified DBR PSi was prepared by either thermal oxidation or thermal hydrosilylation. Free-standing DBR PSi films were generated by lift-off from the silicon wafer substrate using an electropolishing current. Free-standing DBR PSi films were ultrasonicated to create DBR-structured porous smart particles. Three different surface-modified DBR smart particles have been prepared and used for sensing volatile organic vapors. For different types of surface-modified DBR smart particles, the shift of reflectivity mainly depends on the vapor pressure of analyte even though the surfaces of DBR smart particles are different. However huge difference in the shift of reflectivity depending on the different types of surface-modified DBR smart particles was obtained when the vapor pressures are quite similar which demonstrate a possible sensing application to specify the volatile organic vapors.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2012

The main issue of boron doped p-type czochralski-grown silicon solar cells is the degradation when they are exposed to light or minority carriers injection. This is due to the meta-stable defect such as boron-oxygen in the Cz-Si material. Although a clear explanation is still researching, recent investigations have revealed that the Cz-Si defect is related with the boron and the oxygen concentration. They also revealed how these defects act a recombination centers in solar cells using density function theory (DFT) calculation. This paper reviews the physical understanding and gives an overview of the degradation models. Therefore, various methods for avoiding the light-induced degradation in Cz-Si solar cells are compared in this paper.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.204-205
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• 2011

In thin film silicon solar cells, p-i-n structure is adopted instead of p/n junction structure as in wafer-based Si solar cells. PECVD is a most widely used thin film deposition process for a-Si:H or ${\mu}c$-Si:H solar cells. For best performance of thin film silicon solar cell, the dopant profiles at p/i and i/n interfaces need to be as sharp as possible. The sharpness of dopant profiles can easily achieved when using multi-chamber PECVD equipment, in which each layer is deposited in separate chamber. However, in a single-chamber PECVD system, doped and intrinsic layers are deposited in one plasma chamber, which inevitably impedes sharp dopant profiles at the interfaces due to the contamination from previous deposition process. The cross-contamination between layers is a serious drawback of a single-chamber PECVD system in spite of the advantage of lower initial investment cost for the equipment. In order to resolve the cross-contamination problem in single-chamber PECVD systems, flushing method of the chamber with NH3 gas or water vapor after doped layer deposition process has been used. In this study, a new plasma process to solve the cross-contamination problem in a single-chamber PECVD system was suggested. A single-chamber VHF-PECVD system was used for superstrate type p-i-n a-Si:H solar cell manufacturing on Asahi-type U FTO glass. A 80 MHz and 20 watts of pulsed RF power was applied to the parallel plate RF cathode at the frequency of 10 kHz and 80% duty ratio. A mixture gas of Ar, H2 and SiH4 was used for i-layer deposition and the deposition pressure was 0.4 Torr. For p and n layer deposition, B2H6 and PH3 was used as doping gas, respectively. The deposition temperature was $250^{\circ}C$ and the total p-i-n layer thickness was about $3500{\AA}$. In order to remove the deposited B inside of the vacuum chamber during p-layer deposition, a high pulsed RF power of about 80 W was applied right after p-layer deposition without SiH4 gas, which is followed by i-layer and n-layer deposition. Finally, Ag was deposited as top electrode. The best initial solar cell efficiency of 9.5 % for test cell area of 0.2 $cm^2$ could be achieved by applying the in-situ plasma cleaning method. The dependence on RF power and treatment time was investigated along with the SIMS analysis of the p-i interface for boron profiles.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.202-206
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• 2007

ZnO is a promising material to make high efficient ultraviolet(UV) or blue light emitting diodes(LEDs) because of its large binding energy and energy bandgap. In this study, we prepared ZnO thin films with p-type conductivity on silicon(100) substrates by RF magnetron sputtering in the mixture of $N_2$ and $O_2$. The process was accompanied by low pressure in-situ annealing in $O_2$ at $600^{\circ}C$ and $800^{\circ}C$ respectively. Hall effect in Van der Pauw configuration showed that the N-doped ZnO film annealed at $800^{\circ}C$ has p-type conductivity. Photoluminescence(PL) spectrum of the film annealed at $800^{\circ}C$ showed UV emission related to exciton and bound to donor-acceptor pair(DAP) as well as visible emission related to many intrinsic defects.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.341-346
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• 2011

In this study, we inserted a Zn buffer layer into a AZO/p-type a-si:H layer interface in order to lower the contact resistance of the interface. For the Zn layer, the deposition was conducted at 5 nm, 7 nm and 10 nm using the rf-magnetron sputtering method. The results were compared to that of the AZO film to discuss the possibility of the Zn layer being used as a transparent conductive oxide thin film for application in the silicon heterojunction solar cell. We used the rf-magnetron sputtering method to fabricate Al 2 wt.% of Al-doped ZnO (AZO) film as a transparent conductive oxide (TCO). We analyzed the electro-optical properties of the ZnO as well as the interface properties of the AZO/p-type a-Si:H layer. After inserting a buffer layer into the AZO/p-type a-Si:H layers to enhance the interface properties, we measured the contact resistance of the layers using a CTLM (circular transmission line model) pattern, the depth profile of the layers using AES (auger electron spectroscopy), and the changes in the properties of the AZO thin film through heat treatment. We investigated the effects of the interface properties of the AZO/p-type a-Si:H layer on the characteristics of silicon heterojunction solar cells and the way to improve the interface properties. When depositing AZO thin film on a-Si layer, oxygen atoms are diffused from the AZO thin film towards the a-Si layer. Thus, the characteristics of the solar cells deteriorate due to the created oxide film. While a diffusion of Zn occurs toward the a-Si in the case of AZO used as TCO, the diffusion of In occurs toward a-Si in the case of ITO used as TCO.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.154-155
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• 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 Korean Vacuum Science & Technology
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.73-77
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• 2000

Single crystal and polycrystalline Si thin films were doped with phosphorus by a 2-zone diffusion method to develop the low-resistivity polycrystalline Si electrode for a hemispherical grain. Solid phosphorus source was used in order to achieve uniformly and highly doped surface region of polycrystalline Si films having rough surface morphology. In case of 2-zone diffusion method, it is proved that the heavy doping near the surface area can be achieved even at a relatively low temperature. SIMS analysis revealed that phosphorus doping concentration in case of using solid P as a doping source was about 50 times as that of phosphine source at 750$^{\circ}C$. Also, ASR analysis revealed that the carrier concentration was about 50 times as that of phosphine. In order to evaluate the electrical characteristics of doped polycrystalline Si films for semiconductor devices, MOS capacitors were fabricated to measure capacitance of polycrystalline Si films. In ${\pm}$2 V measuring condition, Si films, doped with solid source, have 8% higher $C_{min}$ than that of unadditional doped Si films and 3% higher $C_{min}$ than that of Si films doped with $PH_3$ source. The leakage current of these films was a few fA/${\mu}m^2$. As a result, a 2-zone diffusion method is suggested as an effective method to achieve highly doped polycrystalline Si films even at low temperature.