• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.405-417
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• 2014

In a high-level waste repository, the gap fill of the engineered barrier is an important component that influences the performance of the buffer and backfill. This paper reviewed the overseas status of R&D on the gap fill used engineered barriers, through which the concept of the gap fill, manufacturing techniques, pellet-molding characteristics, and emplacement techniques were summarized. The concept of a gap fill differs for each country depending on its disposal type and concept. Bentonite has been considered a major material of a gap fill, and clay as an inert filler. Gap fill was used in the form of pellets, granules, or a pellet-granule blend. Pellets are manufactured through one of the following techniques: static compaction, roller compression, or extrusion-cutting. Among these techniques, countries have focused on developing advanced technologies of roller compression and extrusion-cutting techniques for industrial pellet production. The dry density and integrity of the pellet are sensitive to water content, constituent material, manufacturing technique, and pellet size, and are less sensitive to the pressure applied during the manufacturing. For the emplacement of the gap fill, pouring, pouring and tamping, and pouring with vibration techniques were used in the buffer gap of the vertical deposition hole; blowing through the use of shotcrete technology and auger placement and compaction techniques have been used in the gap of horizontal deposition hole and tunnel. However, these emplacement techniques are still technically at the beginning stage, and thus additional research and development are expected to be needed.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.730-733
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• 2013

In this work, buffer layers with various conditions are inserted at an n/i interface in hydrogenated amorphous silicon semitransparent solar cells. It is observed that the performance of a solar cell strongly depends on the arrangement and thickness of the buffer layer. When arranging buffer layers with various bandgaps in ascending order from the intrinsic layer to the n layer, a relatively high open circuit voltage and short circuit current are observed. In addition, the fill factors are improved, owing to an enhanced shunt resistance under every instance of the introduced n/i buffer layers. Among the various conditions during the arrangement of the buffer layers, a reverse V shape of the energy bandgap is found to be the most effective for high efficiency, which also exhibits intermediate transmittance among all samples. This is an inspiring result, enabling an independent control of the conversion efficiency and transmittance.

• Journal of Ceramic Processing Research
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• v.13 no.spc2
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• pp.336-340
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• 2012

Wide band gap p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO:H) buffer layer has been used at the interface of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) p-type layer of a p-i-n type a-Si:H solar cell. Introduction of 5 nm thick buffer layer improves in blue response of the cell along with 0.5% enhancement of photovoltaic conversion efficiency (η). The cells with buffer layer show higher open circuit voltage (Voc), fill factor (FF), short circuit current density (Jsc) and improved blue response with respect to the cell without buffer layer.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.1129-1134
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• 2015

In this article, a study of a flower like nanostructured CdS buffer layer for improving the performance of a submicron-thick $CuIn_{1-x}Ga_xSe_2$ (CIGS) solar cell (SC) is presented. Both its synthesis and properties are discussed in detail. The surface reflectance of the device is dramatically decreased. SCs with flower like nanostructured CdS buffer layers enhance short-circuit current density, fill factor, and open-circuit voltage. These enhancements contribute to an increase in power conversion efficiency of about 55% on average compared to SCs that don't have a flower like nanostructured CdS buffer layer, despite them both having the same CIGS light absorbing layer.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.122-127
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• 2009

The injection mold with multi-cavity is essential for mass production of plastic products. Multi-cavity molds are designed to geometrically balanced runner system to uniformly fill to each cavity. However, despite geometrical balanced runner system, filling imbalances between cavity to cavity have always been observed in injection molding. To solve these problems, many studies such as Melt Flipper, RC Pin, and others have been presented. The results of these studies have been an effect on filling balances in multi-cavity molds. But, those have had a limitation that additional insert parts must have existed in the mold. In this study, a new runner system is suggested for filling balance between cavity to cavity using "Melt-Buffer" with simple change of runner shape. A series of simulation to confirm feasibility of Melt-Buffer's effects was conducted using injection molding CAE program. Also, a series of injection molding experiment was conducted using plastic materials such as ABS and PP. As results of this study, feasibilities of filling balances by Melt-Buffer were confirmed.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.6-11
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• 2020

The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of a two-terminal tandem solar cell depends upon the tunnel-recombination junction (TRJ) between the top and bottom sub-cells. An optimized TRJ in a tandem cell helps improve its open-circuit voltage (V_oc), short-circuit current density (J_sc), fill factor (FF), and efficiency (PCE). One of the parameters that affect the TRJ is the buffer layer thickness. Therefore, we investigated various TRJs by varying the thickness of the buffer or intermediate layer (TRJ-buffer) in between the highly doped p-type and n-type layers of the TRJ. The TRJ-buffer layer was p-type nc-Si:H, with a doping of 0.06%, an activation energy (E_a) of 43 meV, an optical gap (E_g) of 2.04 eV, and its thickness was varied from 0 nm to 125 nm. The tandem solar cells we investigated were a combination of a heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) bottom sub-cell and an a-Si:H (amorphous silicon) top sub-cell. The initial cell efficiency without the TRJ buffer was 7.65% while with an optimized buffer layer, its efficiency improved to 11.74%, i.e., an improvement in efficiency by a factor of 1.53.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.478.1-478.1
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• 2014

We investigated $MoO_3$ graded ITO electrodes for organic solar cells (OSCs) without PEDOT:PSS buffer layer. The effect of $MoO_3$ thickness on the electrical, optical, and structural properties of $MoO_3$ graded ITO anodes prepared by RF/DC magnetron co-sputtering system using $MoO_3$ and ITO targets was investigated. At optimized conditions, we obtained $MoO_3$ graded ITO electrodes with a low sheet resistance of 13 Ohm/square, a high optical transmittance of 83% and a work function of 4.92 eV, comparable to conventional ITO films. Due to the existence of $MoO_3$ on the ITO electrodes, OSCs fabricated on $MoO_3$ graded ITO electrode without buffer layer successfully operated. Although OSCs fabricated on ITO anode without buffer layer showed a low power conversion efficiency of 1.249%, OSCs fabricated on $MoO_3$ graded ITO electrode without buffer layer showed a outstanding cell performance of 2.545%. OSCs fabricated on the $MoO_3$ graded ITO electrodes exhibited a fill factor of 61.275%, a short circuit current of 7.439 mA/cm2, an open circuit voltage of 0.554 V, and a power conversion efficiency of 2.545%. Therefore, $MoO_3$ graded ITO electrodes can be considered a promising transparent electrode for cost efficient and reliable OSCs because it could eliminate the use of acidic PEDOT:PSS buffer layer.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.440-448
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• 2004

In this paper, to make a solar cell of II-Ⅵ ZnTe compound semiconductor, we studied for the property of the transparent electrode(AZO) and Buffer layer(ZnO), and for reducing the energyband gap of optical absorber layer which are most effective on its efficiency. The ZnTe thin film was used the optical absorber layer of solar cell. Zn and Te were deposited using the co-sputtering method. The thin film was sputtered RF power of Zn/50W and Te/30W, respectively and a substrate temperature of foot under Ar atmosphere of 10mTorr. The energy band gap of the thin film was 1.73ev Then the thin film was annealed at $400^{\circ}C$ for 10sec under a vacuum atmosphere. The energy band gap of 1.67eV was achieved and the film composition ratio of Zn and Te was 32% and 68%. At the best condition, the Solar Cell was manufactured and the efficiency of 6.85% (Voc: 0.69V, Jsc: 21.408㎃/$cm^2$, Fill factor (FF): 0.46) was achieved.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.534-534
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• 2013

본 연구에서는 RF/DC 마그네트론 스퍼터링 시스템을 이용하여 co-sputtering 방법으로 TiO2와 ZnO를 이용하여 인버티드 유기태양전지용 버퍼층을 제작하고 TiO2와 ZnO의 함량에 따른 인버티드 유기 태양전지 특성을 비교하였다. Ti-Zn-O 버퍼층은 기존의 버퍼층 제작에 사용되던 용액 공정 대신 스퍼터링 시스템을 이용하여 제작하였다. ITO 전극 상부에 곧바로 Ti-Zn-O를 성막하여 Anode와 버퍼층이 일체화된 투명 전극을 제작하고 ZnO와 TiO2 함량이 유기 태양전지의 특성에 미치는 영향을 연구하였다. 버퍼층의 TiO2와 ZnO 함량에 따른 광학적, 구조적특성을 UV/Vis spectrometry와 X-ray diffraction (XRD), TEM 등으로 분석하였으며, Ti-Zn-O 박막의 실제 버퍼 층으로서의 적용 가능성을 알아보기 위해 인버티드 유기태양전지로 제작하여 그 특성을 평가하였다. 기존의 인버티드 유기태양전지의 특성이 fill factor of 55.58%, short circuit current of 8.33 mA/cm2, open circuit voltage of 0.66 V, efficiency 3.06%인데 반해 최적 조건의 Ti-Zn-O 버퍼층을 적용했을 경우 fill factor of 52.05%, short circuit current of 8.81 mA/cm2, open circuit voltage of 0.66 V, efficiency 3.03%인 우수한 유기태양전지의 특성을 보임으로써 스퍼터링 공법으로 제작된 Ti-Zn-O 박막의 인버티드 유기태양전지용 버퍼 층으로서의 적용 가능성을 확인하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.171-171
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• 2012

We have studied the effects of plasma treatments on CdS buffer layers in CIGS thin film solar cells. The CdS layers were deposited on CIGS films by chemical bath deposition (CBD) method. The RF plasma treatments of the CdS thin films were performed with Ar, $O_2 and $N_2 gases, respectively. After plasma treatments, the solar cells with Al:ZnO/i-ZnO/CdS/CIGS structures were fabricated. The surface properties of the CdS/CIGS thin films after plasma treatments were investigated with SEM, EDX and AFM measurements. The electrical properties of manufactured solar cell were discussed with the results of current-voltage measurements. The plasma treatments have a strong influence on the open circuit voltage (VOC) and the fill factor of the solar cells. Finally, a correlation between the surface properties of CdS layer and the efficiencies of the CIGS thin film solar cells is discussed.