• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.35.1-35.1
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• 2010

The Cu(In,Ga)Se2(CIGS) thin film solar cells have been achieved until almost 20% efficiency by NREL. These solar cells include chemically deposited CdS as buffer layer between CIGS absorber layer and ZnO window layer. Although CIGS solar cells with CdS buffer layer show excellent performance, many groups made hard efforts to overcome its disadvantages in terms of high absorption of short wavelength, Cd hazardous element. Among Cd-free candidate materials, the CIGS thin film solar cells with Zn compound buffer layer seem to be promising with 15.2%(module by showa shell K.K.), 18.6%(small area by NREL). However, few groups were successful to report high-efficiency CIGS solar cells with Zn compound buffer layer, compared to be known how to fabricate these solar cells. Each group's chemical bah deposition (CBD) condition is seriously different. It may mean that it is not fully understood to grow high quality Zn compound thin film on the CIGS using CBD. In this study, we focused to clarify growth mechanism of chemically deposited Zn compound thin film on the CIGS, especially. Additionally, we tried to characterize junction properties with unfavorable issues, that is, slow growth rate, imperfect film coverage and minimize these issues. Early works reported that film deposition rate increased with reagent concentration and film covered whole rough CIGS surface. But they did not mention well how film growth of zinc compound evolves homogeneously or heterogeneously and what kinds of defects exist within film that can cause low solar performance. We observed sufficient correlation between growth quality and concentration of NH3 as complex agent. When NH3 concentration increased, thickness of zinc compound increased with dominant heterogeneous growth for high quality film. But the large amounts of NH3 in the solution made many particles of zinc hydroxide due to hydroxide ions. The zinc hydroxides bonded weakly to the CIGS surface have been removed at rinsing after CBD.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.138-138
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• 2009

Recently, thin-film solar cells of Cu(In,Ga)$Se_2$(CIGS) have reached a high level of performance, which has resulted in a 19.9%-efficient device. These conventional devices were typically fabricated using chemical bath deposited CdS buffer layer between the CIGS absorber layer and ZnO window layer. However, the short wavelength response of CIGS solar cell is limited by narrow CdS band gap of about 2.42 eV. Taking into consideration the environmental aspect, the toxic Cd element should be replaced by a different material. It is why during last decades many efforts have been provided to achieve high efficiency Cd-free CIGS solar cells. In order to alternate CdS buffer layer, ZnS buffer layer is grown by using chemical bath deposition(CBD) technique. The thickness and chemical composition of ZnS buffer layer can be conveniently by varying the CBD processing parameters. The processing parameters were optimized to match band gap of ZnS films to the solar spectrum and exclude the creation of morphology defects. Optimized ZnS buffer layer showed higher optical transmittance than conventional thick-CdS buffer layer at the short wavelength below ~520 nm. Then, chemically deposited ZnS buffer layer was applied to CIGS solar cell as a alternative for the standard CdS/CIGS device configuration. This CIGS solar cells were characterized by current-voltage and quantum efficiency measurement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.535-538
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• 2004

Zinc Oxide (ZnO) films have attracted considerable attention for transparent conducting films, because of their high conductivity, good optical transmittance from UV to near IR as well as a low-cost fabrication. To increase the conductivity of ZnO, doping of group III elements (Al, Ga, In and B) has been carried out. Transparent conducting films have been applied for optoelectric devices, the development of the transparent conducting thin films on flexible light-weight substrates are required. In this research, the transparent conducting ZnO thin films doped with Aluminum (Al) on polymer substrates were deposited by the RF magnetron suputtering method, and the structural, optical and electrical properties were investigated.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.795-800
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• 2005

The optical properties of $ZnS_{y}Se_{1-x-y}:Te_x\;(x\;<\;0.08,\;y\∼0.11$) alloys grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) have been investigated by photoluminescence (PL) and PL-excitation (PLE) spectroscopy. Good optical properties and high crystal quality were established with lattice match condition to GaAs substrate. At room temperature, emission in the visible spectrum region from blue to green was obtained by varying the Te content of the ZnSSe:Te alloy. The efficient blue and green emission were assigned to $Te_{1}$Tel and $Te_{n}$ (n$\geq$2) cluster bound excitons, respectively. Bright blue (462 nm) and green (535 nm) light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been developed using ZnSSe:Te system as an active layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.175-175
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• 2009

AZO, GZO, ZIO 박막은 DC 마그네트론 법으로 각각의 소결체 타겟을 사용하여 유리 기판위에 증착되었다. 상온에서 증착된 GZO 박막의 경우 $1.61{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}cm$ 의 가장 낮은 비저항을 나타내었다. 전기적 특성을 향상시키기 위하여 기판온도를 상승하였을 때 역시 GZO 박막이 가장 낮은 $6.413{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}cm$ 을 나타내었다.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.7
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• pp.991-996
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• 2010

Blue-green and green LEDs have been successfully fabricated grown by MBE, which has introduced the $ZnS_ySe_{1-x-y}:Te_x$ (x=0.04, y~0.11-0.14) ternary epilayer as an active layer. From the I-V characteristics, the built-in voltage (~2.1 V) is very small compared to other wide bandgap LEDs, such as commercial InGaN-based LEDs (>3.2 V). From the C-V profiling, the effective carrier concentration in the p-type ZnMgSSe cladding layer was evaluated as ${\sim}2.8{\times}10^{16}\;cm^{-3}$ for the present LEDs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.688-688
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• 2013

Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin films have attracted a lot of attention as a cheap transparent conducting oxide (TCO) material that can replace the expensive Sn-doped In2O3. In particular, AZO thin films are widely used as a window layer of chalcogenide-based thin film solar cells such as Cu(In,Ga)Se2 and Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS). Mostly important requirements for the window layer material of the thin film solar cells are the high transparency and the low sheet resistance, because they influence the light absorption by the activelayer and the electron collection from the active layer, respectively. In this study, we prepared the AZO thin films by RF magnetron sputtering using a ZnO/Al2O3 (98：2wt%) ceramic target, and the effect of the sputtering condition such as the working pressure, RF power, and the working distance on the optical, electrical, and crystallographic properties of the AZO thin films was investigated. The AZO thin films with optimized properties were used as a window layer of CZTS thin film solar cells. The CZTS active layers were prepared by the electrochemical deposition and the subsequent sulfurization process, which is also one of the cost-effective synthetic approaches. In addition, the solar cell properties of the CZTS thin film solar cells, such as the photocurrent density-voltage (J-V) characteristics and the external quantum efficiency (EQE) were investigated.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.98.2-98.2
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• 2012

Thin film solar cells are growing up in the market due to their high efficiency and low cost. Especially CdTe and $CuInGaSe_2$ based solar cells are leading the other cells, but due to the limited percentage of the elements present in our earth's crust like Tellurium, Indium and Gallium, the price of the solar cells will increase rapidly. Copper Zinc Tin Sulfide (CZTS) and Copper Zinc Tin Selenide (CZTSe) semiconductor (having a kesterite crystal structure) are getting attention for its solar cell application as the absorber layer. CZTS and CZTSe have almost the same crystal structure with more environmentally friendly elements. Various authors have reported growth and characterization of CZTSe films and solar cells with efficiencies about 3.2% to 8.9%. In this study, a novel method to prepare CZTSe has been proposed based on selenization of stacked Copper Selenide ($Cu_2Se$), Tin Selenide ($SnSe_2$) and Zinc Selenide (Zinc Selenide) in six possible stacking combinations. Depositions were carried out through RF magnetron sputtering. Selenization of all the samples was performed in Close Space Sublimation (CSS) in vacuum at different temperatures for three minutes. Characterization of each sample has been performed in Field Emission SEM, XRD, Raman spectroscopy, EDS and Auger. In this study, the properties and results of $Cu_2ZnSnSe_4$ thin films grown by selenization will be presented.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.400-403
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• 2012

$Cu_2ZnSnSe_4$(CZTSe) is emerged as a promising material for thin-film solar cells because of non-toxic, inexpensive and earth abundant more than $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$ materials. For fabricating compound semiconductor thin-film solar cells, CdS is widely used for a buffer layer which fabricated by a chemical bath deposition method (CBD). Through the experiment, we controlled deposition temperature and mol ratio of solution conditions to find the proper grain 크기 and exact composition. The optimum CdS layers were characterized in terms of surface morphology by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). The optimized CdS layer process was applied on CZTSe thin-films. The thickness of buffer layer related with device performance of solar cells which controlled by deposition time. Local surface potential of CdS/CZTSe thin-films was investigated by Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM). From these results, we can deduce local electric properties with different thickness of buffer layer on CZTSe thin-films. Therefore, we investigated the effect of CdS buffer layer thickness on the CZTSe thin-films for decreasing device losses. From this study, we can suggest buffer layer thickness which contributes to efficiencies and device performance of CZTSe thin-film solar cells.

• Journal of the Mineralogical Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 2014

In present study, we geochemically investigated the fresh coal ashes and the saline ash pond of an electric power plant in Korea, which burns imported bituminous coals. The goals are to see the chemical changes of the ash pond by reaction with coal ashes and to investigate the relative leachability of elements from the ashes by reaction with saline waters. For this study, one fresh fly ash, one fresh bottom ash, and 7 water samples were collected. All the ash samples and 2 water samples were analyzed for 55 elements. The results indicated that the fly ashes are enriched with chalcophilic elements such as Cu, Zn, Ga, Ge, Se, Cd, Sb, Au, Pb, and B relative to other elements. On the other hand, concentrations of As, Ba, Co, Ga, Li, Mn, Mo, Sb, U, V, W, and Zr are much higher in the ash pond than those dissolved in the seawater. Ag, Bi, Li, Mo, Rb, Sb, Sc, Se, Sn, Sr, and W show high ratios of elemental concentrations in pond water to those in the fly ash. Our results imply that the leaching of trace elements is regulated by geochemical controls such as solubility and adsorption even though the trace elements are relatively enriched on the ash surfaces after the coal combustion due to their volatilities.