• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제43회 하계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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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.

• 태양에너지
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• 제17권4호
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• pp.3-11
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• 1997

다결정 실리콘에서 결정입계는 광생성된 반송자들의 재결합 중심으로 작용할 뿐 아니라 전위장벽으로 작용하여 태양전지의 변환효율을 감소시킨다. 결정입계의 영향을 줄이기 위해 열처리, 결정입계에 대한 선택적 식각, 결정입계로 함몰전극을 형성하는 방법, 다양한 전극 구조, 초박막 금속 형성 후 전극형성 등 여러가지 요소들을 조사하였다. 질소 분위기에서 $900^{\circ}C$ 전열처리, $POCl_3$ 확산을 통한 게터링, 후면전계 형성을 위한 Al 처리로 다결정 실리콘의 결함밀도를 감소시켰다. 결정입계에서의 반송자 손실을 감소시키기 위한 기판 처리로 Schimmel 식각액을 사용하였다. 이는 texturing 효과와 함께 결정입계를 선택적으로 $10{\mu}m$ 깊이로 식각하였다. 결점입계를 우선적으로 식각한 후면으로 Al을 확산하여 후면에서의 재결합 손실을 감소시켰다. 전극 핑거(grid finger) 간격이 0.4mm인 세밀한 전극 구조에 결정입계로 $0.4{\mu}m$ 깊이로 함몰전극을 추가로 형성하여 태양전지의 단락 전류 밀도가 개선되었다. 80% 이상의 광투과율을 보인 20nm 두께의 크롬 박막 형성으로 직렬 저항을 감소시켰다. 본 논문은 저가의 고효율, 지상 전력용 태양진지를 위해 결정입계에 대한 연구를 하였다.

• 한국표면공학회지
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• 제51권2호
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• pp.116-125
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• 2018

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is a commonly used material for the front contact layer of chalcopyrite $CuInGaSe_2$ (CIGS) based thin film solar cells since it satisfies the requisite optical and electrical properties with low cost and abundant elemental availability. Low-resistivity and high-transmission front contacts have been developed for high-performance CIGS solar cells, and nearly meet the required performance. However, the durability of the cell especially for the corrosion resistance of AZO films has not been studied intensively. In this work, AZO films were prepared on Corning glass 7059 substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering depending on the hydrogen content. The electrical and optical properties and electrochemical corrosion resistance of the AZO films were evaluated as a function of the hydrogen content. With increasing hydrogen content to 6 wt%, the crystallinity, crystal size, and surface roughness of the films increased, and the resistivity decreased with increased carrier concentration, Hall mobility, oxygen vacancies, and $Zn(OH)_2$ binding on the AZO surface. At a hydrogen content of 6 wt%, the corrosion resistance was also relatively high with less columnar morphology, shallow pore channels, and lower grain boundary angles.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제33권3호
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• pp.214-218
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• 2020

In this study, Mg_xZn_1-xO thin films, which can be applied not only to active layers of light-emitting devices (LEDs), such as UV-LEDs, but also to solar cells, high mobility field-effect transistors, and power semiconductor devices, are fabricated using the sol-gel method. ZnO and Mg_0.3Zn_0.7O solution synthesized by the sol-gel method and the thin film were grown by spin coating on a Si (100) substrate and sapphire substrate. The solutions are synthesized by dissolving precursor materials in 2-methoxyethanol (2-ME) solvent, and then monoethanolamine (MEA) was added to the mixed solution as a sol stabilizer. Zinc acetate dihydrate is used as a ZnO precursor, while Mg nitrate hexahydrate and Mg acetate tetrahydrate are used as an MgO precursor. Then, the optical and structural characteristics of the fabricated thin films are compared. The molar concentration of the Zn precursor in the solvent is fixed at 0.3 M, and the amount of the Mg precursor is 30% of Mg²⁺/Zn²⁺. The optical characteristics are measured using an UV-vis spectrophotometer, and the transmittance of each wavelength is measured. Structural characteristics are measured using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Composition analyses are performed using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The Mg_0.3Zn_0.7O thin film was well formed at the ratio of the Mg precursor added regardless of the type of Mg precursor, and the c-axis of the thin film was decreased, while the band gap was increased to 3.56 eV.

• 한국표면공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국표면공학회 2018년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.56-56
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• 2018

Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) have attracted attention due to their high electrical conductivity and optical transparency in the visible region. Consequently, TCOs have been widely used as electrode materials in various electronic devices such as flat panel displays and solar cells. Previous studies on TCOs focused on their electrical and optical performances; there have been numerous attempts to improve these properties, such as chemical doping and crystallinity enhancement. Recently, due to rapidly increasing demand for flexible electronics, the academic interest in the mechanical stability of materials has come to the fore as a major issue. In particular, long-term stability under bending is a crucial requirement for flexible electrodes; however, research on this feature is still in the nascent stage. Hydrogen-incorporated amorphous In-Sn-O (a-ITO) thin films were fabricated by introducing hydrogen gas during deposition. The hydrogen concentration in the film was determined by secondary ion mass spectrometry and was found to vary from $4.7{\times}10^{20}$ to $8.1{\times}10^{20}cm^{-3}$ with increasing $H_2$ flow rate. The mechanical stability of the a-ITO thin films dramatically improved because of hydrogen incorporation, without any observable degradation in their electrical or optical properties. With increasing hydrogen concentration, the compressive residual stress gradually decreased and the subgap absorption at around 3.1 eV was suppressed. Considering that the residual stress and subgap absorption mainly originated from defects, hydrogen may be a promising candidate for defect passivation in flexible electronics.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.55-60
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• 2018

Transparent conductive thin films (TCFs) are essential materials for solar cells, organic light-emitting diodes, and display panels. Indium tin oxide (ITO) is one of the most widely used commercial materials to create TCFs'; however, new materials that can possibly replace ITO at a lower cost and/or those possessing mechanical flexibility are urgently needed. Silver nanowire (AgNW) is one of those promising materials, as it is less expensive and possesses superior mechanical flexibility as compared to ITO. We used AgNW and sol-gel ZnO to fabricate composite thin films by spray coating. We propose two spray-coating methods: the 'metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)/AgNW' method and the Mixture method. These two methods are expected to be commercialized for high-quality and low-cost products, respectively.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제35권1호
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• pp.32-36
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• 2022

AGZO thin films were deposited on glass substrates using RF magnetron sputtering system under Ar flow rates, and their structural, electrical, and optical properties were analyzed systematically. As a result of the XRD pattern, the peak of the (002) (2θ≈33.7˚) orientation was observed, and it was found to have a hexagonal wurtzite structure. The sheet resistance of Ar 5 sccm was 3.073×10² Ω/sq and showed the best electrical properties because of the improvement of mobility due to the increase of the grain size and the variation of RMS roughness. In addition, the average transmittance was more than 90% for all samples, which demonstrated good optical properties. It is expected that the TCO characteristics can be improved by controlling Ar flow rates, and this will increase the efficiency of photoelectronic devices such as OLED and solar cells.

• 대한기계학회논문집 C: 기술과 교육
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.7-12
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• 2013

$SnO_2$ (tin oxide) 박막은 물리적, 전기적 성질이 우수하여 첨단산업의 다양한 분야에서 널리 응용/개발되고 있다. 이의 응용대상은 다양한 센서, 윈드쉴드(windshield) 윈도우의 히팅 요소, 태양전지, flat panel diplay에서의 투명전극을 들 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 대면적 기판에 대한 APCVD 공정개발을 위하여 실험용 2세대 크기의 유리기판에 $SnO_2$ 박막증착 실험을 수행하였다. 증착 온도가 증가함에 따라 증착 두께가 두꺼워지고 이에 따라 면저항은 감소, 투과도는 감소, 연무도 (haze)는 증가함을 확인하였다. 증착을 위한 전구체인 $SnCl_4$의 유량이 증가함에 따라 증착 두께 역시 증가하고 이에 따라 면저항은 감소한다. 그러나 투과도와 연무도는 $SnCl_4$ 유량의 영향을 거의 받지 않는다는 것을 확인하였다.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 1993년도 하계학술대회 논문집 B
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• pp.1147-1149
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• 1993

ZnO/$SnO_2$:F bilayer films have been prepared by pyrosol deposition method to develop optimum transparent electrode for use in amorphous silicon solar cells. The solution for $SnO_2:F$ film was composed of $SnCl_4{\cdot}5H_2O,\;NH_4F,\;CH_3OH$ and HCl, and ZnO films have been deposited on the $SnO_2:F$ films by using the solution of $ZnO(CH_3COO){_2}{\cdot}2H_2O,\;H_2O\;and\;CH_3OH$. These films have been investigated the variation of electrical and optical properties under the hydrogen plasma exposure. The sheet resistance of the $SnO_2:F$ film was sharply increased and its transmittance was decreased with the blackish effect after plasma treatment. However, the ZnO/$SnO_2:F$ bilayer film was shown hydrogen plasma durability because the electrical and optical properties was almost unchanged more then 60 seconds exposure time.

• 한국재료학회지
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• 제21권10호
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• pp.573-579
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• 2011

Highly textured Ag, Al and Al:Si back reflectors for flexible n-i-p silicon thin-film solar cells were prepared on 100-${\mu}m$-thick stainless steel substrates by DC magnetron sputtering and the influence of their surface textures on the light-scattering properties were investigated. The surface texture of the metal back reflectors was influenced by the increased grain size and by the bimodal distribution that arose due to the abnormal grain growth at elevated deposition temperatures. This can be explained by the structure zone model (SZM). With an increase in the deposition temperatures from room temperature to $500^{\circ}C$, the surface roughness of the Al:Si films increased from 11 nm to 95 nm, whereas that of the pure Ag films increased from 6 nm to 47 nm at the same deposition temperature. Although Al:Si back reflectors with larger surface feature dimensions than pure Ag can be fabricated at lower deposition temperatures due to the lower melting point and the Si impurity drag effect, they show poor total and diffuse reflectance, resulting from the low reflectivity and reflection loss on the textured surface. For a further improvement of the light-trapping efficiency in solar cells, a new type of back reflector consisting of Ag/Al:Si bilayer is suggested. The surface morphology and reflectance of this reflector are closely dependent on the Al:Si bottom layer and the Ag top layer. The relationship between the surface topography and the light-scattering properties of the bilayer back reflectors is also reported in this paper.