• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.127-130
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• 2001

Si thin films on p-type (100) Si substrate have been fabricated by pulsed laser deposition technique using a Nd:YAG laser. The pressure of the environmental gas during deposition was 1 Torr. After deposition, Si thin film has been annealed again at 400-840$^{\circ}C$ in nitrogen ambient. Strong blue photoluminescence (PL) have been observed at room temperature. We report the PL properties of Si thin films depending on the variation of the annealing temperature.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.75-78
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• 2002

Si thin films on p-type (100) Si substrate have been prepared by a pulsed laser deposition technique using a Nd:YAG laser. The pressure of the environmental gas during deposition was 1 Torr. After deposition, Si thin film has been annealed again at 400-840$^{\circ}C$ in nitrogen ambient. Strong blue photoluminescence (PL) have been observed at room temperature. We report the PL properties of Si thin films with the variation of the annealing temperature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.232-232
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• 2012

The doping of semiconducting elements is essential for the development of silicon quantum dot (QD) solar cells. Especially the doping elements should be activated by substitution at the crystalline sites in the crystalline silicon QDs. However, no analysis technique has been developed for the analysis of the activated dopants in silicon QDs in $SiO_2$ matrix. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is a powerful technique for the in-depth analysis of solid materials and the impurities analysis of boron and phosphorus in semiconductor materials. For the study of diffusion behaviour of B and P by SIMS, Si/$SiO_2$ multilayer films doped by B or P were fabricated and annealed at high temperatures for the activated doping of B and P. The distributions of doping elements were analyzed by SIMS. Boron found to be preferentially distributed in Si layer rather than the $SiO_2$ layer. Especially the B in the Si layers was separated to two components of an interfacial component and a central one. The central component was understood as the activated elements. On the other hand, phosphorus did not show any preferred diffusion.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.289-293
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• 2010

Silicon quantum dots (Si QDs) in a superlattice for high efficiency tandem solar cells were fabricated by magnetron rf sputtering and their characteristics were investigated. SiC/$Si_{1-x}C_x$ superlattices were deposited by co-sputtering of Si and C targets and annealed at $1000^{\circ}C$ for 20 minutes in a nitrogen atmosphere. The Si QDs in Si-rich layers were verified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction. The size of the QDs was observed to be 3-6 nm through high resolution TEM. Some crystal Si and -SiC peaks were clearly observed in the grazing incident X-ray diffractogram. Raman spectroscopy in the annealed sample showed a sharp peak at $516\;cm^{-1}$ which is an indication of Si QDs. Based on the Raman shift the size of the QD was estimated to be 4-6 nm. The volume fraction of Si crystals was calculated to be about 33%. The change of the FT-IR absorption spectrum from a Gaussian shape to a Lorentzian shape also confirmed the phase transition from an amorphous phase before annealing to a crystalline phase after annealing. The optical absorption coefficient also decreased, but the optical band gap increased from 1.5 eV to 2.1 eV after annealing. Therefore, it is expected that the optical energy gap of the QDs can be controlled with growth and annealing conditions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.134-134
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• 2011

High-k dielectric materials such as $HfO_2$, $ZrO_2$ and $Al_2O_3$ increase gate capacitance and reduce gate leakage current in MOSFET structures. This behavior suggests that high-k materials will be promise candidates to substitute as a tunnel barrier. Furthermore, stack structure of low-k and high-k tunnel barrier named variable oxide thickness (VARIOT) is more efficient.[1] In this study, we fabricated the $WSi_2$ nanocrystals nonvolatile memory device with $SiO_2/HfO_2/Al_2O_3$ tunnel layer. The $WSi_2$ nano-floating gate capacitors were fabricated on p-type Si (100) wafers. After wafer cleaning, the phosphorus in-situ doped poly-Si layer with a thickness of 100 nm was deposited on isolated active region to confine source and drain. Then, on the gate region defined by using reactive ion etching, the barrier engineered multi-stack tunnel layers of $SiO_2/HfO_2/Al_2O_3$ (2 nm/1 nm/3 nm) were deposited the gate region on Si substrate by using atomic layer deposition. To fabricate $WSi_2$ nanocrystals, the ultrathin $WSi_2$ film with a thickness of 3-4 nm was deposited on the multi-stack tunnel layer by using direct current magnetron sputtering system [2]. Subsequently, the first post annealing process was carried out at $900^{\circ}C$ for 1 min by using rapid thermal annealing system in nitrogen gas ambient. The 15-nm-thick $SiO_2$ control layer was deposited by using ultra-high vacuum magnetron sputtering. For $SiO_2$ layer density, the second post annealing process was carried out at $900^{\circ}C$ for 30 seconds by using rapid thermal annealing system in nitrogen gas ambient. The aluminum gate electrodes of 200-nm thickness were formed by thermal evaporation. The electrical properties of devices were measured by using a HP 4156A precision semiconductor parameter analyzer with HP 41501A pulse generator, an Agillent 81104A 80MHz pulse/pattern generator and an Agillent E5250A low leakage switch mainframe. We will discuss the electrical properties for application next generation non-volatile memory device.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4607-4616
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• 2023

We implement machine learning regression models to predict peak pressures of primary and secondary systems, a major safety concern in Loss Of Condenser Vacuum (LOCV) accident. We selected the Multi-dimensional Analysis of Reactor Safety-KINS standard (MARS-KS) code to analyze the LOCV accident, and the reference plant is the Korean Optimized Power Reactor 1000MWe (OPR1000). eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) is selected as a machine learning tool. The MARS-KS code is used to generate LOCV accident data and the data is applied to train the machine learning model. Hyperparameter optimization is performed using a simulated annealing. The randomly generated combination of initial conditions within the operating range is put into the input of the XGBoost model to predict the peak pressure. These initial conditions that cause peak pressure with MARS-KS generate the results. After such a process, the error between the predicted value and the code output is calculated. Uncertainty about the machine learning model is also calculated to verify the model accuracy. The machine learning model presented in this paper successfully identifies a combination of initial conditions that produce a more conservative peak pressure than the values calculated with existing methodologies.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.390-395
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• 2007

We systematically investigated the effects of InAs coverage variation, two-step annealing and an asymmetric InGaAs quantum well (QW) on the structural and optical characteristics of InAs quantum dots (QDs) by using atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and photoluminescence (PL) measurement. The transition of size distribution of InAs QDs from bimodal to multi-modal was noticeably observed with increasing InAs coverage. By means of two-step annealing, it is found that significant narrowing of the luminescence linewidth (from 132 to 31 meV) from the InAs QDs occurs together with about 150 meV blueshift, compared to as-grown InAs QDs. Finally, the InAs QDs emitting at longer wavelength of $1.3\;{\mu}m$ with narrow linewidth were grown by an asymmetric InGaAs QW. The excited-state transition for the InAs QDs with an asymmetric InGaAs QW was not noticeably observed due to the large energy-level spacing between the ground states and the first excited states. The InAs QDs with an asymmetric InGaAs QW will be promising for the device applications such as $1.3\;{\mu}m$ optical-fiber communication.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.207-207
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• 2012

Si quantum dot (QD) imbedded in a $SiO_2$ matrix is a promising material for the next generation optoelectronic devices, such as solar cells and light emission diodes (LEDs). However, low conductivity of the Si quantum dot layer is a great hindrance for the performance of the Si QD-based optoelectronic devices. The effective doping of the Si QDs by semiconducting elements is one of the most important factors for the improvement of conductivity. High dielectric constant of the matrix material $SiO_2$ is an additional source of the low conductivity. Active doping of B was observed in nanometer silicon layers confined in $SiO_2$ layers by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) depth profiling analysis and confirmed by Hall effect measurements. The uniformly distributed boron atoms in the B-doped silicon layers of $[SiO_2(8nm)/B-doped\;Si(10nm)]_5$ films turned out to be segregated into the $Si/SiO_2$ interfaces and the Si bulk, forming a distinct bimodal distribution by annealing at high temperature. B atoms in the Si layers were found to preferentially substitute inactive three-fold Si atoms in the grain boundaries and then substitute the four-fold Si atoms to achieve electrically active doping. As a result, active doping of B is initiated at high doping concentrations above $1.1{\times}10^{20}atoms/cm^3$ and high active doping of $3{\times}10^{20}atoms/cm^3$ could be achieved. The active doping in ultra-thin Si layers were implemented to silicon quantum dots (QDs) to realize a Si QD solar cell. A high energy conversion efficiency of 13.4% was realized from a p-type Si QD solar cell with B concentration of $4{\times}1^{20}atoms/cm^3$. We will present the diffusion behaviors of the various dopants in silicon nanostructures and the performance of the Si quantum dot solar cell with the optimized structures.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.49 no.9
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• pp.732-738
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• 2011

Silicon oxide thin films were deposited by using a plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition technique to investigate the light emission properties. The photoluminescence characteristics were divided into two categories along the relative ratio of the flow rates of $SiH_4$ and $N_2O$ source gases, which show light emission in the broad/visible range and a light emission peak at 380 nm. We attribute the broad/visible light emission and the light emission peak to the quantum confinement effect of nanocrystalline silicon and the Si=O defects, respectively. Changes in the photoluminescence spectra were observed after the post-annealing processes. The photoluminescence spectra of the broad light emission in the visible range shifted to the long wavelength and were saturated above an annealing temperature of $900^{\circ}C$ or after 1 hour annealing at $970^{\circ}C$. However, the position of the light emission peak at 380 nm did not change at all after the post-annealing processes. The light emission intensities at 380 nm initially increased, and decreased at annealing temperatures above $700^{\circ}C$ or after 1 hour annealing at $700^{\circ}C$. The photoluminescence behaviors after the annealing processes can be explained bythe size change of the nanocrystalline silicon and the density change of Si=O defect in the films, respectively. These results support the possibility of using a silicon-based light source for Si-optoelectronic integrated circuits and/or display devices.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.83-88
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• 2003

The optoelectronic characteristics of semiconducto-atomic superlattice as a function of deposition temperature and annealing conditions have been studied. The nanocrystalline silicon/adsorbed oxygen superlattice formed by molecular beam epitaxy(MBE) system. As an experimental result, the superlattice with multilayer Si-O structure showed a stable photoluminescence(PL) and good insulating behavior with high breakdown voltage. This is very useful promise for Si-based optoelectronics and quantum devices as well as for the replacement of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) in ultra-high speed and lower power CMOS devices in the future, and it can be directly integrated with silicon ULSI processing.