• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.75-75
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• 2011

Recently, dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) attracts great attention as a promising alternative to conventional silicon solar cells. One of the key components for the DSSC would be the nanocrystalline TiO2 electrode, and the control of interface between TiO2 and TCO is a highly important issue in improving the photovoltaic conversion efficiency. In this work, we applied various interfacial layers, and analyzed their effect in enhancing photovoltaic properties. In overall, introduction of interfacial layers increased both the Voc and Jsc, since the back-reaction of electrons from TCO to electrolyte could be blocked. First, several metal oxides with different band gaps and positions were employed as interfacial layer. SnO2, TiO2, and ZrO2 nanoparticles in the size of 3-5 nm have been synthesized. Among them, the interfacial layer of SnO2, which has lower flat-band potential than that of TiO2, exhibited the best performance in increasing the photovoltaic efficiency of DSSC. Second, long-range ordered cubic mesoporous TiO2 films, prepared by using triblock copolymer-templated sol-gel method via evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) process, were utilized as an interfacial layer. Mesoporous TiO2 films seem to be one of the best interfacial layers, due to their additional effect, improving the adhesion to TCO and showing an anti-reflective effect. Third, we handled the issues related to the optimum thickness of interfacial layers. It was also found that in fabricating DSSC at low temperature, the role of interfacial layer turned out to be a lot more important. The self-assembled interfacial layer fabricated at room temperature leads to the efficient transport of photo-injected electrons from TiO2 to TCO, as well as blocking the back-reaction from TCO to I3-. As a result, fill factor (FF) was remarkably increased, as well as increase in Voc and Jsc.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.371-372
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• 2012

We have studied lead-based gapless semiconductors, $PbPdO_2$, which is very sensitive to external parameters such as temperature, pressure, electric field, etc[1]. We have fabricated pure $PbPdO_2$, Co- and Mn-doped $PbPdO_2$ thin films using the pulsed laser deposition. Because of the volatile element of Pb, it is very difficult to grow the films. Note that in case of $MgB_2$, Mg is also volatile element. So in order to enhance the quality of $MgB_2$, some experiments are carried out in annealing with Mg-rich atmosphere [2]. This annealing process with volatile element plays an important role in making smooth surface. Thus, we applied such process to our studies of $PbPdO_2$ thin films. As a result, we found the optimal condition of ex-situ annealing temperature ${\sim}650^{\circ}C$ and time ~12 hrs. The ex-situ annealing brought the extreme change of surface morphology of thin films. After ex-situ annealing with PbO-rich atmosphere, the grain size of thin film was almost 100 times enlarged for all the thin films and also the PbO impurity phase was smeared out. And from X-ray diffraction measurements, we determined highly crystallized phases after annealing. So, we measured electrical and magnetic properties. Because of reduced grain boundary, the resistivity of ex-situ annealed samples changed smaller than no ex-situ sample. And the carrier densities of thin films were decreased with ex-situ annealing time. In this case, oxygen vacancies were removed by ex-situ annealing. Furthermore, we will discuss the transport and magnetic properties in pure $PbPdO_2$, Co- and Mn-doped $PbPdO_2$ thin films in detail.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.427-427
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• 2012

Ferroelectric-gate field effect transistor based memory using a nanowire as a conducting channel offers exceptional advantages over conventional memory devices, like small cell size, low-voltage operation, low power consumption, fast programming/erase speed and non-volatility. We successfully fabricated ferroelectric nonvolatile memory devices using both n-type and p-type Si nanowires coated with organic ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)] via a low temperature fabrication process. The devices performance was carefully characterized in terms of their electrical transport, retention time and endurance test. Our p-type Si NW ferroelectric memory devices exhibit excellent memory characteristics with a large modulation in channel conductance between ON and OFF states exceeding $10^5$; long retention time of over $5{\times}10^4$ sec and high endurance of over 105 programming cycles while maintaining ON/OFF ratio higher $10^3$. This result offers a viable way to fabricate a high performance high-density nonvolatile memory device using a low temperature fabrication processing technique, which makes it suitable for flexible electronics.

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.68-72
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• 2009

We report on the growth of $CuCrO_2$ films using pulsed laser deposition and their structural and electrical transport properties. $CuCrO_2$ thin films were doped with 5 at% Mg for p-type properties. Epitaxial films of $CuCr_{0.95}Mg_{0.05}O_2$ were grown on c-plane sapphire substrates. The effects of growth temperature and oxygen pressure on film properties were investigated. The main phase of delafossite $CuCr_{0.95}Mg_{0.05}O_2$ was appeared above the growth temperature of $600^{\circ}C$. The thin film grown at $500^{\circ}C$ showed the highest conductivity, reaching 19.6 S/cm while higher growth temperatures over $500^{\circ}C$ led to lower conductivity; the thin film grown at $700^{\circ}C$ showed 0.02 S/cm.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.110-118
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• 2002

The hydrogen storage vessel having a good heat conductivity along with a simple structure and a low cost for these alloys was designed and manufactured, and then its characteristic properties were studied in this study. The various parts in hydrogen storage vessel consisted of copper pipes and stainless steel of 250 mesh reached the setting temperature after 4~5 minutes, which indicated that storage vessel had a good heat conductivity that was required in application. And also the storage vessel had a good property of hydrogen transport considering that the reaction time between hydrogen and rare-earth metal alloys in storage vessel was found to be within 10 min at $18^{\circ}C$ under 10 atmospheric pressure. It showed that the average capacity of discharged hydrogen volume was found to be $120{\ell}$ for $MmNi_{4.5}Mn_{0.5}$ under discharging conditions of $40^{\circ}C{\sim}80^{\circ}C$ at a constant flow rate of $5{\ell}$/min. It was found that the optimum discharging temperature for obtaining an appropriate pressure of 3atm was determined to be $60^{\circ}C$ for $MmNi_{4.5}Mn_{0.5}$ hydrogen storage alloy.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.268-272
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• 2018

An $Al_2O_3/AlN$ bilayer deposited on GaN by atomic layer deposition (ALD) is employed to prepare $Al_2O_3/AlN/GaN$ metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) diodes, and their interfacial properties are investigated using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with sputter etch treatment and current-voltage (I-V) measurements. XPS analyses reveal that the native oxides on the GaN surface are reduced significantly during the early ALD stage, indicating that AlN deposition effectively clelans up the GaN surface. In addition, the suppression of Al-OH bonds is observed through the ALD process. This result may be related to the improved device performance because Al-OH bonds act as interface defects. Finally, temperature dependent I-V analyses show that the barrier height increases and the ideality factor decreases with an increase in temperature, which is associated with the barrier inhomogeneity. A Modified Richardson plot produces the Richardson constant of $A^{**}$ as $30.45Acm^{-2}K^{-2}$, which is similar to the theoretical value of $26.4Acm^{-2}K^{-2}$ for n-GaN. This indicates that the barrier inhomogeneity appropriately explains the forward current transport across the $Au/Al_2O_3/AlN/GaN$ interface.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.266-273
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• 2008

Natural gas hydrates are ice-like solid substances, which are composed of water and natural gas, mainly methane. They have three kinds of crystal structures of five polyhedra formed by hydrogen-bonded water molecules, and are stable at high pressures and low temperatures. They contain large amounts of organic carbon and widely occur in deep oceans and permafrost regions. Therefore, they are expected as a potential energy resource in the future. Especially, $1m^3$ natural gas hydrate contains up to $172Nm^3$ of methane gas, de pending on the pressure and temperature of production. Such large volumes make natural gas hydrates can be used to store and transport natural gas. In this study, three-phase equilibrium conditions for forming natural gas hydrate were numerically obtained in pure water and single electrolyte solution containing 3 wt% NaCl. The results show that the predictions match the previous experimental values very well, and it was found that NaCl acts as an inhibitor. Also, help gases such that ethane, propane, i-butane, and n-butane reduce the hydrate formation pressure at the same temperature.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.32-38
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• 2017

Insulating $TaN_x$ films were grown by plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition using butylimido tris dimethylamido tantalum and $N_2+H_2$ mixed gas as metalorganic source and reactance gas, respectively. Crossbar devices having a $Pt/TaN_x/Pt$ stack were fabricated and their electrical properties were examined. The crossbar devices exhibited temperature-dependent nonlinear I (current) - V (voltage) characteristics in the temperature range of 90-300 K. Various electrical conduction mechanisms were adopted to understand the governing electrical conduction mechanism in the device. Among them, the PooleFrenkel emission model, which uses a bulk-limited conduction mechanism, may successfully fit with the I - V characteristics of the devices with 5- and 18-nm-thick $TaN_x$ films. Values of ~0.4 eV of trap energy and ~20 of dielectric constant were extracted from the fitting. These results can be well explained by the amorphous micro-structure and point defects, such as oxygen substitution ($O_N$) and interstitial nitrogen ($N_i$) in the $TaN_x$ films, which were revealed by transmission electron microscopy and UV-Visible spectroscopy. The nonlinear conduction characteristics of $TaN_x$ film can make this film useful as a selector device for a crossbar array of a resistive switching random access memory or a synaptic device.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.785-791
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• 2002

The effect of the supercritical carbon dioxide (sc$CO_2$) on ion-conductive behaviors for polyether electrolytes based on, both poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) and poly [oligo (oxyethylene glycol) methacrylate] (PMEO) with lithium triflate, LiCF$_3$SO$_3$, has been investigated. In particular, the present research is a new concept for improving the ionic conductivity of polyether electrolytes. The maximum ionic conductivity ($\sigma$$_{max}$) at room temperature of the PEO electrolyte was more than 100 times higher, and the $\sigma$$_{max}$ at 9$0^{\circ}C$ of the PMEO electrolyte was 30 times improved by the se$CO_2$ treatment, respectively. It was revealed that the penetration of $CO_2$ molecules into the polymer matrix causes the increase of carrier ions by ion-dispersion effect and the decrease of glass transition temperature (T$_{g}$) by plasticizing effect that results in the improvement of the ion transport behaviors.viors.

• Atmosphere
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.131-151
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• 2010

This study establishes a conceptual model to analyze heavy rainfall events in Korea using multi-functional transport satellite-1R satellite images. Three heavy rainfall episodes in two major synoptic types, such as synoptic low (SL) type and synoptic flow convergence (SC) type, are analyzed through a conceptual model procedure which proceeds on two steps: 1) conveyer belt model analysis to detect convective area, and 2) cloud top temperature analysis from black body temperature (TBB) data to distinguish convective cloud from stratiform cloud, and eventually estimate heavy rainfall area and intensity. Major synoptic patterns causing heavy rainfall are Changma, synoptic low approach, upper level low in the SL type, and upper level low, indirect effect of typhoon, convergence of tropical air in the SC type. The relationship between rainfall and TBBs in overall well resolved areas of heavy rainfall. The SC type tended to underestimate the intensity of heavy rainfall, but the analysis with the use of water vapor channel has improved the performance. The conceptual model improved a concrete utilization of images and data of satellite, as summarizing characteristics of major synoptic type causing heavy rainfall and composing an algorism to assess the area and intensity of heavy rainfall. The further assessment with various cases is required for the operational use.