• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2014

We report the nitrogen monoxide (NO) gas sensing properties of p-type CuO-nanorod-based gas sensors. We synthesized the p-type CuO nanorods with breadth of about 30 nm and length of about 330 nm by a hydrothermal method using an as-deposited CuO seed layer prepared on a $Si/SiO_2$ substrate by the sputtering method. We fabricated polycrystalline CuO nanorod arrays at $80^{\circ}C$ under the hydrothermal condition of 1:1 morality ratio between copper nitrate trihydrate [$Cu(NO_2)_2{\cdot}3H_2O$] and hexamethylenetetramine ($C_6H_{12}N_4$). Structural characterizations revealed that we prepared the pure CuO nanorod array of a monoclinic crystalline structure without any obvious formation of secondary phase. It was found from the gas sensing measurements that the p-type CuO nanorod gas sensors exhibited a maximum sensitivity to NO gas in dry air at an operating temperature as low as $200^{\circ}C$. We also found that these CuO nanorod gas sensors showed reversible and reliable electrical response to NO gas at a range of operating temperatures. These results would indicate some potential applications of the p-type semiconductor CuO nanorods as promising sensing materials for gas sensors, including various types of p-n junction gas sensors.

• Conservation Science in Museum
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• v.18
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• pp.51-64
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• 2017

The Bracket clock in the collection of the Korean Christian Museum at Soongsil University underwent conservation treatment for a special exhibition. The compositional analysis showed that the body was made of brass plated with gold by fire-gilding(gold amalgam process), while the dial was identified as pure copper coated with enamel. The hands were made of steel. Remnants of adhesive tape on the dial were cleaned, followed by the addition of a protective coating. In order to restore it to a condition as similar to its original form as possible, replacements for missing parts were newly constructed out of brass and were connected to the hands and the dial. The dial was then fixed to the body using an acrylic support. The compositional analysis and conservation treatment have left the clock in stable condition and readily available for exhibitions and future studies.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.307-316
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• 2003

Salt spray, CASS(copper accelerated acetic salt spray) and EC(electrolytic corrosion) tests were performed in order to evaluate the corrosion resistance of plated Ni and Ni-Cr layers on Fe substrate. Compared with the conventional methods such as salt spray and CASS, the electrochemical method such as EC test may be beneficial in terms of test time span and quantitative accuracy. Furthermore, EC test can also become the alternative method to evaluate the resistance to corrosion of coatings by measuring the corrosion potentials of the coated layers in the electrolyte during the off-time of EC cycles. Compared with the corrosion potentials of pure iron, nickel, chromium, those potentials of coated layers can be used to anticipate the extent of corrosion. Results showed that in terms of the test time span, EC test gave 14 times and 21 times faster results than the salt spray test in cases of $5\mu\textrm{m}$ Ni and $20\mu\textrm{m}$ Ni plated layers, respectively. In addition, EC test also offered the shorter test time span than CASS test in cases of $5 \mu\textrm{m}$ Ni + $0.5\mu\textrm{m}$ Cr, and $20\mu\textrm{m}$ Ni + $0.5\mu\textrm{m}$ Cr on Fe substrate by 78 times and 182 times, respectively. Therefore, EC test can be regarded as the better method to evaluate the resistance to corrosion of coated layers than the conventional methods such as salt spray and CASS.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.48 no.12
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• pp.1097-1102
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• 2010

Silver coated copper powders were prepared by a chemical reduction method with controlling the deposition process variables such as the feeding rate of the silver ionic solution and concentration of the reductants at room temperature. The characteristics of the products were evaluated by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffractometer (XRD), atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AA) and a 4 probe resistivity measurement system. The optimum condition of the preparation of Ag coated Cu powders was at 0.05 M of potassium sodium tartrate and 2 ml/min of the feeding rate of the silver ionic solution. Our method successfully produced dense, uniform, and well-dispersed Ag coated Cu powder of $2{\sim}2.5{\mu}m$ witha silver layer of 100~200 nm. Additionally, we found that thespecific resistivity of the 30 wt.% Ag coated Cu powder was similar to that of pure silver, so that the composite powder could be used as an alternative electromagnetic shielding material for silver.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.394-403
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• 2016

$H_2$ production by chemical looping is an efficient method to convert hydrocarbon fuel into hydrogen with the simultaneous capture of concentrated $CO_2$. This process involves the use of an iron based oxygen carrier that transfers pure oxygen from oxidizing gases to fuels by alternating reduction and oxidation (redox) reactions. The enhanced reactivities of copper oxide doped iron-based oxygen carrier were reported, however, the fundamental understandings on the interaction between $Fe_2O_3$ and CuO are still lacking. In this study, we studied the effect of dopant of CuO to $Fe_2O_3/ZrO_2$ particle on the morphological changes and the associated reactivity using various methods such as SEM/EDX, XRD, BET, TPR, XPS, and TGA. It was found that copper oxide acted as a chemical promoter that change chemical environment in the iron based oxygen carrier as well as a structural promoter which inhibit the agglomeration. The enhanced reduction reactivity was mainly ascribed to the increase in concentration of $Fe^{2+}$ on the surface, resulting in formation of charge imbalance and oxygen vacancies. The CuO doped $Fe_2O_3/ZrO_2$ particle also showed the improved reactivity in the steam oxidation compared to $Fe_2O_3/ZrO_2$ particle probably due to acting as a structural promoter inhibiting the agglomeration of iron species.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.97-104
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• 2016

In the preparation of Ag-coated Cu flakes using L-ascorbic acid as a reductant for the electroless Ag plating, the effects of pretreatment methods and the reductant concentration on the uniformity of Ag coating layer and the anti-oxidation property of Ag-coated Cu flakes during the heating in air were evaluated. It was found that the removal degree of surface oxide layer during the pretreatment has great influence on the uniformity of Ag coating layer and the formation degree of hole defects in the flakes has slight effect on the anti-oxidation property of Ag-coated Cu flakes. It was also verified that the reductant concentration has great influence on the coverage uniformity and thickness of Ag coating, thus it was could be considered a main process parameter. When the reductant concentration was 0.04 M, high-quality Ag-coated Cu flakes was obtained. When the concentration increased to 0.06 M, however, the anti-oxidation property of Ag-coated Cu flakes became remarkably worse owing to remnant of Cu surface non-coated with Ag by the formation of pure Ag fine particles.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.172-179
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• 2020

The impact of effective parameters on the electrodeposition rate optimization of Au-Cu alloy at high thicknesses on the silver substrate was investigated in the present study. After ensuring the formation of gold alloy deposits with the desired and standard percentage of gold with the cartage of 18K and other standard karats that should be observed in the manufacturing of the gold and jewelry artifacts, comparing the rate of gold-copper deposition by direct and pulsed current was done. The rate of deposition with pulse current was significantly higher than direct current. In this process, the duty cycle parameter was effectively optimized by the "one factor at a time" method to achieve maximum deposition rate. Particular parameters in this work were direct and pulse current densities, bath temperature, concentration of gold and cyanide ions in electrolyte, pH, agitation and wetting agent additive. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and surface chemical analysis system (EDS) were used to study the effect of deposition on the cross-sections of the formed layers. The results revealed that the Au-Cu alloy layer formed with concentrations of 6gr·L^-1 Au, 55gr·L^-1 Cu, 24 gr·L^-1 KCN and 1 ml·L^-1 Lauryl dimethyl amine oxide (LDAO) in the 0.6 mA·cm^-2 average current density and 30% duty cycle, had 0.841 ㎛·min^-1 Which was the highest deposition rate. The use of electrodeposition of pure and alloy gold thick layers as a production method can reduce the use of gold metal in the production of hallow gold artifacts, create sophisticated and unique models, and diversify production by maintaining standard karats, hardness, thickness and mechanical strength. This will not only make the process economical, it will also provide significant added value to the gold artifacts. By pulsating of currents and increasing the duty cycle means reducing the pulse off-time, and if the pulse off-time becomes too short, the electric double layer would not have sufficient growth time, and its thickness decreases. These results show the effect of pulsed current on increasing the electrodeposition rate of Au-Cu alloy confirming the previous studies on the effect of pulsed current on increasing the deposition rate of Au-Cu alloy.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.79-84
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• 2014

To investigate the plating properties of a diethylene glycol-based Ag immersion plating solution containing citric acid, silver immersion plating was performed in a range from room temperature to $50^{\circ}C$ using sputtered Cu specimens. The used Cu specimens possessed surface structure with large numbers of pinholes which were created with over-acid etching. The Ag immersion plating performed at $40^{\circ}C$ exhibited that the pinholes and copper surface were completely filled with Ag just after 5 min mainly due to galvanic displacement reaction, indicating the best plating properties. Subsequently, the surface morphology of Ag-coated Cu became rougher as the plating time increased to 30 min because of the deposition of silver nanoparticles created by chemical reduction in the solution. The specimen that its overall surface was covered with silver indicated the start of oxidation at temperature higher than around $50^{\circ}C$ in air as compared with pure Cu, indicating enhanced anti-oxidation properties.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.22-28
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• 2013

The skyshine effect is an essential and important phenomenon in the shielding design of the high energy accelerator. In this study, a new estimation method of neutron skyshine was proposed and was verified by comparison with existing methods. The effective dose of secondary neutrons and photons at the locations that was far away from high-energy electron accelerator was calculated using FLUKA and PHITS Monte Carlo code. The transport paths of secondary radiations to reach a long distance were classified as skyshine, direct, groundshine and multiple-shine. The contribution of each classified component to the total effective dose was evaluated. The neutrons produced from the thick copper target irradiated by 10 GeV electron beam was applied as a source term of this transport. In order to evaluate a groundshine effect, the composition of soil on the PAL-XFEL site was considered. At a relatively short distance less than 50 m from the accelerator tunnel, the direct and groundshine components mostly contributed to the total effective dose. The skyshine component was important at a long distance. The evaluated dose of neutron skyshine agreed better with the results using Rindi's formula, which was based on the experimental results at high energy electron accelerator. That also agreed with the estimated dose using the simple evaluation code, SHINE3, within about 20%. The total effective dose, including all components, was 10 times larger than the estimated doses using other methods for this comparison. The influence of multiple-shine path in this evaluation of the estimation method was investigated to be bigger than one of pure skyshine path.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.65-65
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• 2012

Copper zinc tin sulfide ($Cu_2ZnSnS_4$, CZTS) is a very promising material as a low cost absorber alternative to other chalcopyrite-type semiconductors based on Ga or In because of the abundant and economical elements. In addition, CZTS has a band-gap energy of 1.4~1.5eV and large absorption coefficient over ${\sim}10^4cm^{-1}$, which is similar to those of $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$(CIGS) regarded as one of the most successful absorber materials for high efficient solar cell. Most previous works on the fabrication of CZTS thin films were based on the vacuum deposition such as thermal evaporation and RF magnetron sputtering. Although the vacuum deposition has been widely adopted, it is quite expensive and complicated. In this regard, the solution processes such as sol-gel method, nanocrystal dispersion and hybrid slurry method have been developed for easy and cost-effective fabrication of CZTS film. Among these methods, the hybrid slurry method is favorable to make high crystalline and dense absorber layer. However, this method has the demerit using the toxic and explosive hydrazine solvent, which has severe limitation for common use. With these considerations, it is highly desirable to develop a robust, easily scalable and relatively safe solution-based process for the fabrication of a high quality CZTS absorber layer. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of a high quality CZTS absorber layer with a thickness of 1.5~2.0 ${\mu}m$ and micrometer-scaled grains using two different non-vacuum approaches. The first solution-processing approach includes air-stable non-toxic solvent-based inks in which the commercially available precursor nanoparticles are dispersed in ethanol. Our readily achievable air-stable precursor ink, without the involvement of complex particle synthesis, high toxic solvents, or organic additives, facilitates a convenient method to fabricate a high quality CZTS absorber layer with uniform surface composition and across the film depth when annealed at $530^{\circ}C$. The conversion efficiency and fill factor for the non-toxic ink based solar cells are 5.14% and 52.8%, respectively. The other method is based on the nanocrystal dispersions that are a key ingredient in the deposition of thermally annealed absorber layers. We report a facile synthetic method to produce phase-pure CZTS nanocrystals capped with less toxic and more easily removable ligands. The resulting CZTS nanoparticle dispersion enables us to fabricate uniform, crack-free absorber layer onto Mo-coated soda-lime glass at $500^{\circ}C$, which exhibits a robust and reproducible photovoltaic response. Our simple and less-toxic approach for the fabrication of CZTS layer, reported here, will be the first step in realizing the low-cost solution-processed CZTS solar cell with high efficiency.