• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.660-665
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• 2011

1-D ZnO nanowires have been attractive for their peculiar properties and easy growth at relatively low temperature. The length, diameter, and density of ZnO nanowires were determined by the several synthetic parameters, such as PEI concentration, growth time, temperature, and zinc salt concentration. The ZnO nanowires were grown on the <001> oriented seed layer using the hydrothermal process with zinc nitrate and HMTA (hexamethylenetetramine) and their structure and optical properties were characterized. The morphology, length and diameter of the nanowires were strongly affected by the relative and/or absolute concentration of $Zn^{2+}$ and $OH^{-1}$ and the hydrothermal temperature. When the concentrations of the zinc nitrate HMTA were the same as 0.015 M, the length and diameter of the nanowires were $1.97{\mu}m$ and $0.07{\mu}m$, respectively, and the aspect ratio was 28.1 with the preferred orientation along the <001> direction. XRD and TEM results showed a high crystallinity of the ZnO nanowires. Optical measurement revealed that ZnO nanowires emitted intensive stimulated UV at 376 nm without showing visible emission related to oxygen defects.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2002.06a
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• pp.119-119
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• 2002

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2002.06a
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• pp.128-128
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• 2002

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2004.02a
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• pp.104-104
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• 2004

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.993-994
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• 2008

Electrochromic (EC) devices are capable of reversibly changing their optical properties upon charge injection and extraction induced by the external voltage. The characteristics of the EC device, such as low power consumption, high coloration efficiency, and memory effects under open circuit status, make them suitable for use in a variety of applications including smart windows and electronic papers. Coloration due to reduction or oxidation of redox chromophores can be used for EC devices (e-paper), but the switching time is slow (second level). Recently, with increasing demand for the low cost, lightweight flat panel display with paper-like readability (electronic paper), an EC display technology based on dye-modified $TiO_2$ nanoparticle electrode was developed. A well known organic dye molecule, viologen, was adsorbed on the surface of a mesoporous $TiO_2$ nanoparticle film to form the EC electrode. On the other hand, ZnO is a wide bandgap II-VI semiconductor which has been applied in many fields such as UV lasers, field effect transistors and transparent conductors. The bandgap of the bulk ZnO is about 3.37 eV, which is close to that of the $TiO_2$ (3.4 eV). As a traditional transparent conductor, ZnO has excellent electron transport properties, even in ZnO nanoparticle films. In the past few years, one-dimension (1D) nanostructures of ZnO have attracted extensive research interest. In particular, 1D ZnO nanowires renders much better electron transportation capability by providing a direct conduction path for electron transport and greatly reducing the number of grain boundaries. These unique advantages make ZnO nanowires a promising matrix electrode for EC dye molecule loading. ZnO nanowires grow vertically from the substrate and form a dense array (Fig. 1). The ZnO nanowires show regular hexagonal cross section and the average diameter of the ZnO nanowires is about 100 nm. The cross-section image of the ZnO nanowires array (Fig. 1) indicates that the length of the ZnO nanowires is about $6\;{\mu}m$. From one on/off cycle of the ZnO EC cell (Fig. 2). We can see that, the switching time of a ZnO nanowire electrode EC cell with an active area of $1\;{\times}\;1\;cm^2$ is 170 ms and 142 ms for coloration and bleaching, respectively. The coloration and bleaching time is faster compared to the $TiO_2$ mesoporous EC devices with both coloration and bleaching time of about 250 ms for a device with an active area of $2.5\;cm^2$. With further optimization, it is possible that the response time can reach ten(s) of millisecond, i.e. capable of displaying video. Fig. 3 shows a prototype with two different transmittance states. It can be seen that good contrast was obtained. The retention was at least a few hours for these prototypes. Being an oxide, ZnO is oxidation resistant, i.e. it is more durable for field emission cathode. ZnO nanotetropods were also applied to realize the first prototype triode field emission device, making use of scattered surface-conduction electrons for field emission (Fig. 4). The device has a high efficiency (field emitted electron to total electron ratio) of about 60%. With this high efficiency, we were able to fabricate some prototype displays (Fig. 5 showing some alphanumerical symbols). ZnO tetrapods have four legs, which guarantees that there is one leg always pointing upward, even using screen printing method to fabricate the cathode.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.34-41
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• 2022

As the use of chemical products increases in daily life, the removal of dye waste has also emerged as an important environmental issue. This dye waste can be decomposed using a photocatalyst, and the photocatalyst can be synthesized very cost-effectively by using the sol-gel technology. The sol-gel technology is not only very useful for nanoscale film formation, but also can simply form multilayer structures. Using a multiple spin coating method, in this study, a ZnO film with a multilayered structure (3 layers, 5 layers) was formed by using zinc oxide (ZnO), which is effective in decomposing various dyes. For performance comparison, a ZnO film having a single layer structure by a single spin coating method was prepared as a control. Structural and elemental analysis of ZnO film was performed using an X-ray diffraction analyzer and an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer. A nanowire-like surface morphology could be observed through a scanning electron microscope. Additionally, UV-Vis spectrophotometer was used to measure the absorbance of UV light. The ZnO film with a five-layer structure degraded the simulated methylene blue by 49% more than the ZnO film with a single-layer structure. In conclusion, it was found that ZnO having a multilayered structure is useful as a photocatalyst that decomposes methylene blue dye more effectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.461.1-461.1
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• 2014

본 연구진에서는 기존에 Ag2S 양자점을 흡광층으로 활용하여 양자점 감응형 태양전지(QDSC)를 제작, 그 성능과 특징을 분석하여 발표한 바 있다. 기존 연구에서 제작된 Ag2S QDSC는 11 mA/cm2의 비교적 높은 광전류와 260 mV의 비교적 낮은 전압으로 인해 1.2%의 광전환효율 성능을 나타내는 것으로 보고되었다. 추후 연구로 진행된 본 결과에서는, 기존에 Single absorber로 사용된 Ag2S의 한계를 보완하기 위해 CdS를 도입하여 co-sensitization을 활용하였다. CdS는 약 2.3 eV의 밴드갭 에너지를 갖는 물질로, 1.1 eV의 밴드갭을 갖는 Ag2S에 비해 흡광 영역은 좁지만 그만큼 전자-정공 재결합을 억제할 수 있는 장점을 가지고 있다. 또한, 전도층으로 사용한 n-type 물질인 ZnO 나노선과의 밴드구조가 매우 적합하게 조화되어, ZnO/CdS/Ag2S 순서로 이종구조를 접합시켰을 때 세 물질의 Conduction band level과 Valence band level이 순차적으로 연결되는 cascade-shaped 밴드구조를 이루게 된다. 빛을 받아 Ag2S와 CdS에서 생성된 전자는 이 cascade 모양의 conduction band를 따라 순차적으로 ZnO로 잘 전달되게 되어, 효율 향상에 큰 도움을 주었다. 이런 장점들로 인해, CdS-Ag2S co-sensitized QDSC는 Ag2S QDSC에 비해 2배나 향상된 효율인 2.4%를 기록하였으며, 이는 IPCE spectrum 측정 등으로 근거가 뒷받침되었다.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.28 no.11
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• pp.671-679
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• 2018

Finite element analyses are carried out to understand the piezoelectric behaviors of ZnO nanowires. Three different types of ZnO nanowires, with aspect ratios of 1:2. 1:31, and 1:57, are analyzed for uniaxial compression, pure bending, and buckling. Under the uniaxial compression with a strain of $1.0{\times}10^{-4}$ as the reference state, it is predicted that all three types of nanowires develop the same magnitude of the piezoelectric fields, which suggests that longer nanowires exhibit higher piezoelectric potential. However, this prediction is not in agreement with the experimental results previously reported in the literature. Such discrepancy is understood when the piezoelectric behaviors under bending and buckling are considered. When only the strain field due to bending is present in bending or buckling, the antisymmetric nature of the through-thickness stain distribution indicates that two piezoelectric fields, the same in magnitude and opposite in sign, develop along the thickness direction, which cancels each other out, resulting in a zero net piezoelectric field. Once additional strain contribution due to axial deformation is superposed on the bending, such field cancelling is compensated for due to the axial component of the piezoelectric field. Such numerical predictions seem to explain the reported experimental results while providing a guideline for the design of nanowire-based piezoelectric devices.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.390.2-390.2
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• 2016

Single crystalline indium-tin-oxide (ITO) nanowires (NWs) were grown by sputtering method. A thin Ni film of 5 nm was coated before ITO sputtering. Thermal treatment forms Ni nanoparticles, which act as templates to diffuse Ni into the sputtered ITO layer to grow single crystalline ITO NWs. Highly optical transparent photoelectric devices were realized by using a transparent metal-oxide semiconductor heterojunction by combining of p-type NiO and n-type ZnO. A functional template of ITO nanowires was applied to this transparent heterojunction device to enlarge the light-reactive surface. The ITO NWs/n-ZnO/p-NiO heterojunction device provided a significant high rectification ratio of 275 with a considerably low reverse saturation current of 0.2 nA. The optical transparency was about 80% for visible wavelengths, however showed an excellent blocking UV light. The nanostructured transparent heterojunction devices were applied for UV photodetectors to show ultra fast photoresponses with a rise time of 8.3 mS and a fall time of 20 ms, respectively. We suggest this transparent and super-performing UV responser can practically applied in transparent electronics and smart window applications.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.593-603
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• 2022

The critical buckling temperature rise of a newly proposed piezoelectrically active sandwich plate (ASP) has been investigated in this work. This structure includes a porous polymeric layer integrated between two piezoelectric nanocomposite layers. The piezoelectric material is made of a passive polymeric material that is activated by lead-free nanowires (NWs) of zinc oxide (ZnO) embedded inside the matrix. In both nanocomposite layers and porous core, functional graded (FG) patterns have been considered for the distributions of ZnO NWs and voids, respectively. By adopting a higher-order theory of plates, the governing equations of thermal buckling are obtained. This set of equations is then treated using an extended mesh-free solution. The effects of plate dimensions, porosity states, and the nanowire parameters have been investigated on the critical buckling temperature rises of the proposed lightweight ASPs with different boundary conditions. The results disclose that the use of porosities in the core and/or mixing ZnO NWs in the face sheets substantially arise the critical buckling temperatures of the newly proposed active sandwich plates.