• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.495-500
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• 2010

In this study, $Al_2O_3$ and $TiO_2$ films was deposited on to PES (poly(ethersulfon) substrate by using atomic layer deposition as functions of deposition temperature and plasma power. The density and carbon contents of $Al_2O_3$ and $TiO_2$ films was changed by varying process conditions. High density thin films was achieved through optimizing the process conditions. Buffer layer was deposited prior to the processing of upper thin films to avoid PES surface destruction during the high power plasma process and to enhances the tortuous path for water vapor permeation for the defect decoupling effect. The water vapor transmission rate by using MOCON test was investigated to analyze the effect. Water vaper permeation properties was improved by using the inorganic multi-layer passivation layer and activation energy of the water vapor permeation was increased.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.724-728
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• 2002

Inductively-coupled $N_2$O plasma was utilized to grow silicon dioxide at low temperature and applied to fabricate polycrystalline-silicon thin film transistors. At $400^{\circ}C$, the thickness of oxide was limited to 5nm and the oxide contained Si≡N and ≡Si-N-Si≡ bonds. The nitrogen incorporation improved breakdown field to 10MV/cm and reduced the interface charge density to $1.52$\times$10^{11}$ $cm^2$ with negative charge. The $N_2$O plasma gate oxide enhanced the field effect mobility of polycrystalline thin film transistor, compared to $O_2$ plasma gate oxide, due to the reduced interface charge at the $Si/SiO_2$ interface and also due to the reduced trap density at Si grain boundaries by nitrogen passivation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.297.2-297.2
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• 2013

Scavenging electricity from wasteful energy resources is currently an important issue and piezoelectric nanogenerators (NGs) based on zinc oxide (ZnO) are promising energy harvesters that can be adapted to various portable, wearable, self-powered electronic devices. Although ZnO has several advantages for NGs, the piezoelectric semiconductor material ZnO generate an intrinsic piezoelectric potential of a few volts as a result of its mechanical deformation. As grown, ZnO is usually n-type, a property that was historically ascribed to native defects. Oxygen vacancies (Vo) that work as donors exist in ZnO thin film and usually screen some parts of the piezoelectric potential. Consequently, the ZnO NGs' piezoelectric power cannot reach to its theoretical value, and thus decreasing the effect from Vo is essential. In the present study, c-axis oriented insulator-like sputtered ZnO thin films were grown in various temperatures to fabricate an optimized nanogenerator (NGs). The purity and crystalinity of ZnO were investigated with photoluminescence (PL). Moreover, by introducing a p-type polymer usually used in organic solar cell, it was discussed how piezoelectric passivation effect works in ZnO thin films having different types of defects. Prepared ZnO thin films have both Zn vacancies (accepter like) and oxygen vacancies (donor like). It generates output voltage 20 time lager than n-type dominant semiconducting ZnO thin film without p-type polymer conjugating. The enhancement is due to the internal accepter like point defects, zinc vacancies (VZn). When the more VZn concentration increases, the more chances to prevent piezoelectric potential screening effects are occurred, consequently, the output voltage is enhanced. Moreover, by passivating remained effective oxygen vacancies by p-type polymers, we demonstrated further power enhancement.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2009

Silicon dioxide as gate dielectrics was grown at $400^{\circ}C$ on a polycrystalline Si substrate by inductively coupled plasma oxidation using a mixture of $O_2$ and $N_2O$ to improve the performance of polycrystalline Si thin film transistors. In conventional high-temperature $N_2O$ annealing, nitrogen can be supplied to the $Si/SiO_2$ interface because a NO molecule can diffuse through the oxide. However, it was found that nitrogen cannot be supplied to the Si/$SiO_2$ interface by plasma oxidation as the $N_2O$ molecule is broken in the plasma and because a dense Si-N bond is formed at the $SiO_2$ surface, preventing further diffusion of nitrogen into the oxide. Nitrogen was added to the $Si/SiO_2$ interface by the plasma oxidation of mixtures of $O_2/N_2O$ gas, leading to an enhancement of the field effect mobility of polycrystalline Si TFTs due to the reduction in the number of trap densities at the interface and at the Si grain boundaries due to nitrogen passivation.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.184-189
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• 2015

In this study, the combined effect of chloride and thiosulfate ions and the effect of the ratio of the two ions on passivation in 304L, 316L, and the duplex stainless steels 2101 and 2205 are investigated using potentiostatic scratch tests. Cyclic polarization and the scratch tests were used to understand the role of anions on localized corrosion in these systems. It was found that the thiosulfate pitting began at a lower potential for 2101 than 304L in 0.6 M NaCl + 0.03 M $Na_2S_2O_3$ solution. The pit morphologies for 304L, 316L, and 2101 in an 0.6 M NaCl + 0.03 M $Na_2S_2O_3$ solution were very different from each other. The results indicate that the pitting switches from predominately thiosulfate pitting to chloride pitting at approximately 0.1 V.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.88-91
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• 2003

Si nanocrystallites thin films have been fabricated by pulsed laser deposition using a Nd:YAG laser. After deposition, samples were annealed at the temperature range of 400 to $800^{\circ}C$. Hydrogen passivation was then performed in the forming gas ($95%N_{2}+5%H_{2}$) at $500^{\circ}C$. Strong violet-indigo photoluminescence has been observed at room temperature on nitrogen ambient-annealed Si nanocrystallites. As a result of photoluminescence spectra and infrared absorption spectra, we conclude that the violet-indigo PL efficiency is related with oxygen vacancy in the $SiO_x$(x= 1.6-1.8) matrix.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.249-249
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• 2010

The effect of forming a passivation layer was investigated in superconformal Cu gap-filling of the nano-scale trench with atomic-layer deposited (ALD)-Ru glue layer. It was discovered that the nucleation and growth of Cu during metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) were affected by hydrogen plasma treatments. Specifically, as the plasma pretreatment time increased, Cu nucleation was suppressed proportionally. XPS and Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy indicated that hydrogen atoms passivate the Ru surface, which leads to suppression of Cu nucleation owing to prevention of adsorption of Cu precursor molecules. For gap-fill property, sub 60-nm ALD Ru trenches without the plasma pretreatment was blocked by overgrown Cu after the Cu deposition. With the plasma pretreatment, superconformal gap filling of the nano-scale trenches was achieved due to the suppression of Cu nucleation near the entrances of the trenches. Even the plasma pretreatment with bottom bias leads to the superconformal gap-filling.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.424-432
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• 2019

Planar BiVO₄ and 3 wt% Mo-doped BiVO₄ (abbreviated as Mo:BiVO₄) film were prepared by the facile spin-coating method on fluorine doped SnO₂(FTO) substrate in the same precursor solution including the Mo precursor in Mo:BiVO₄ film. After annealing at a high temperature of 450℃ for 30 min to improve crystallinity, the films exhibited the monoclinic crystalline phase and nanoporous architecture. Both films showed no remarkably discrepancy in crystalline or morphological properties. To investigate the effect of surface passivation exploring the Al₂O₃ layer, the ultra-thin Al₂O₃ layer with a thickness of approximately 2 nm was deposited on BiVO₄ film using the atomic layer deposition (ALD) method. No distinct morphological modification was observed for all prepared BiVO₄ and Mo:BiVO₄ films. Only slightly reduced nanopores were observed. Although both samples showed some reduction of light absorption in the visible wavelength after coating of Al₂O₃ layer, the Al₂O₃ coated BiVO₄ (Al₂O₃/BiVO₄) film exhibited enhanced photoelectrochemical performance in 0.5 M Na₂SO₄ solution (pH 6.5), having higher photocurrent density (0.91 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), briefly abbreviated as V_RHE) than BiVO₄ film (0.12 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V_RHE). Moreover, Al₂O₃ coating on the Mo:BiVO₄ film exhibited more enhanced photocurrent density (1.5 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V_RHE) than the Mo:BiVO₄ film (0.86 mA/㎠ at 1.23 V_RHE). To examine the reasons, capacitance measurement and Mott-Schottky analysis were conducted, revealing that the significant degradation of capacitance value was observed in both BiVO₄ film and Al₂O₃/Mo:BiVO₄ film, probably due to degraded capacitance by surface passivation. Furthermore, the flat-band potential (V_FB) was negatively shifted to about 200 mV while the electronic conductivities were enhanced by Al₂O₃ coating in both samples, contributing to the advancement of PEC performance by ultra-thin Al₂O₃ layer.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2012

The Hydrogenated silicon nitride (SiNx:H) using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition is widely used in photovoltaic industry as an antireflection coating and passivation layer. In the high temperature firing process, the $SiN_x:H$ film should not change the properties for its use as high quality surface layer in crystalline silicon solar cells. Initially PECVD-$SiN_x:H$ film trends were investigated by varying the deposition parameters (temperature, electrode gap, RF power, gas flow rate etc.) to optimize the process parameter conditions. Then by varying gas ratios ($NH_3/SiH_4$), the hydrogenated silicon nitride films were analyzed for its optical, electrical, chemical and surface passivation properties. The $SiN_x:H$ films of refractive indices 1.90~2.20 were obtained. The film deposited with the gas ratio of 3.6 (Refractive index=1.98) showed the best properties in after firing process condition. The single crystalline silicon solar cells fabricated according to optimized gas ratio (R=3.6) condition on large area substrate of size $156{\times}156mm$ (Pseudo square) was found to have the conversion efficiency as high as 17.2%. Optimized hydrogenated silicon nitride surface layer and high efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells fabrication sequence has also been explained in this study.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.634-640
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• 1998

A well- shaped trench was investigated in view of the defect distribution along trench sidewall and bottom using high resolution transmission electron microscopy. The trench was formed by HBr plasma and additive gases in magnetically enhanced reactive ion etching system. Adding $0_2$ and other additive gases into HBr plasma makes it possible to eliminate sidewall undercut and lower surface roughness by forming the passivation layer of lateral etching, resulted in the well filled trench with oxide and polysilicon by subsequent deposition. The passivation layer of lateral etching was mainly composed of $SiO_xF_y$ $SiO_xBr_y$ confirmed by chemical analysis. It also affects the generation and distribution of lattice defects. Most of etch induced defects were found in the edge region of the trench bottom within the depth of 10$\AA$. They are generally decreased with the thickness of residue layer and almost disappeared below the uni¬formly thick residue layer. While the formation of crystalline defects in silicon substrate mainly depends on the incident angle and energy of etch species, the region of surface defects on the thickness of residue layer formed during trench etching.