• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.180-180
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• 2010

Thin film transistors (TFTs) based on oxide semiconductors have emerged as a promising technology, particularly for active-matrix TFT-based backplanes. Currently, an amorphous oxide semiconductor, such as InGaZnO, has been adopted as the channel layer due to its higher electron mobility. However, accurate and repeatable control of this complex material in mass production is not easy. Therefore, simpler polycrystalline materials, such as ZnO and $SnO_2$, remain possible candidates as the channel layer. Inparticular, ZnO-based TFTs have attracted considerable attention, because of their superior properties that include wide bandgap (3.37eV), transparency, and high field effect mobility when compared with conventional amorphous silicon and polycrystalline silicon TFTs. There are some technical challenges to overcome to achieve manufacturability of ZnO-based TFTs. One of the problems, the stability of ZnO-based TFTs, is as yet unsolved since ZnO-based TFTs usually contain defects in the ZnO channel layer and deep level defects in the channel/dielectric interface that cause problems in device operation. The quality of the interface between the channel and dielectric plays a crucial role in transistor performance, and several insulators have been reported that reduce the number of defects in the channel and the interfacial charge trap defects. Additionally, ZnO TFTs using a high quality interface fabricated by a two step atomic layer deposition (ALD) process showed improvement in device performance In this study, we report the fabrication of high performance ZnO TFTs with a $Si_3N_4$ gate insulator treated using plasma. The interface treatment using electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) $O_2$ plasma improves the interface quality by lowering the interface trap density. This process can be easily adapted for industrial applications because the device structure and fabrication process in this paper are compatible with those of a-Si TFTs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.151-151
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• 2010

In this paper, the electrically properties of nonvolatile memory (NVM) using multi-stacks gate insulators of oxide-nitride-oxynitride (ONOn) and active layer of the low temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) were investigated. From hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), the LTPS thin films with high crystalline fraction of 96% and low surface's roughness of 1.28 nm were fabricated by the metal induced crystallization (MIC) with annealing conditions of $650^{\circ}C$ for 5 hours on glass substrates. The LTPS thin film transistor (TFT) or the NVM obtains a field effect mobility of ($\mu_{FE}$) $10\;cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, threshold voltage ($V_{TH}$) of -3.5V. The results demonstrated that the NVM has a memory window of 1.6 V with a programming and erasing (P/E) voltage of -14 V and 14 V in 1 ms. Moreover, retention properties of the memory was determined exceed 80% after 10 years. Therefore, the LTPS fabricated by the MIC became a potential material for NVM application which employed for the system integration of the panel display.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.341-341
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• 2016

The discovery of light emission in nanostructured silicon has opened up new avenues of research in nano-silicon based devices. One such pathway is the application of silicon quantum dots in advanced photovoltaic and light emitting devices. Recently, there is increasing interest on the silicon quantum dots (c-Si QDs) films embedded in amorphous hydrogenated silicon-nitride dielectric matrix (a-SiNx: H), which are familiar as c-Si/a-SiNx:H QDs thin films. However, due to the limitation of the requirement of a very high deposition temperature along with post annealing and a low growth rate, extensive research are being undertaken to elevate these issues, for the point of view of applications, using plasma assisted deposition methods by using different plasma concepts. This work addresses about rapid growth and single step development of c-Si/a-SiNx:H QDs thin films deposited by RF (13.56 MHz) and ultra-high frequency (UHF ~ 320 MHz) low-pressure plasma processing of a mixture of silane (SiH4) and ammonia (NH3) gases diluted in hydrogen (H2) at a low growth temperature ($230^{\circ}C$). In the films the c-Si QDs of varying size, with an overall crystallinity of 60-80 %, are embedded in an a-SiNx: H matrix. The important result includes the formation of the tunable QD size of ~ 5-20 nm, having a thermodynamically favorable <220> crystallographic orientation, along with distinct signatures of the growth of ${\alpha}$-Si3N4 and ${\beta}$-Si3N4 components. Also, the roles of different plasma characteristics on the film properties are investigated using various plasma diagnostics and film analysis tools.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.110-114
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• 2007

Dependence of the thermal stability of nickel silicide on the film stress of inter layer dielectric (ILD) layer has been investigated in this study and silicon nitride $(Si_3N_4)$ layer is used as an ILD layer. Nickel silicide was formed with a one-step rapid thermal process at $500^{\circ}C$ for 30 sec. $2000{\AA}$ thick $Si_3N_4$ layer was deposited using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition after the formation of Ni silicide and its stress was split from compressive stress to tensile stress by controlling the power of power sources. Stress level of each stress type was also split for thorough analysis. It is found that the thermal stability of nickel silicide strongly depends on the stress type as well as the stress level induced by the $Si_3N_4$ layer. In the case of high compressive stress, silicide agglomeration and its phase transformation from the low-resistivity nickel mono-silicide to the high-resistivity nickel di-silicide are retarded, and hence the thermal stability is obviously improved a lot. However, in the case of high tensile stress, the thermal stability shows the worst case among the stressed cases.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.250-254
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• 2003

A film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) device for 2 GHz radio frequency (RF) bandpass filter application is presented. This FBAR device consists of an aluminum nitride (AlN) film sandwiched between top(Al) and bottom(Au) electrodes and an acoustic multilayer reflector of a silicon dioxide/tungsten (SiO2/W). The A/N film deposited using a RF sputtering was observed to have small columnar grains with a strongly preferred orientation towards c axis. In addition to a high quality factor (4300), a large return loss of 37.19 dB was obtained.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.556-561
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• 2008

This paper reports the characteristics of piezoelectric microspeakers that are audible in open air with high quality piezoelectric AlN thin film according to the materials properties. When we use a tensile-stressed silicon nitride diaphragm as a supporting layer, the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) is relatively small and constant at low frequency region and shows about 70 dB at 10 kHz. However, in case of a compressively stressed composite diaphragm, the SPL of the fabricated microspeakers shows higher output pressure than those of a tensile-stressed diaphragm. It produces more than 66 dB from 100 Hz to 15 kHz and the highest SPL is about 100 dB at 9.3 kHz with $20V_{peak-to-peak}$, sinusoidal input biases and at 10 mm distances from the fabricated microspeakers to the reference microphone. From the experimental results, it is superior to have a compressively composite diaphragm in order to produce a high SPL in piezoelectric microspeaker.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.07c
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• pp.1884-1886
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• 2005

KrF 펄스 레이저 증착법(pulsed laser deposition: PLD)으로 ZnO 박막을 증착하여 평판 디스플레이 소자 구동용 박막 트랜지스터(thin film transistor) 소자를 제작하였다. 전도성이 높은 실리콘웨이퍼(c-Si, 하부전극) 기판 위에 LPCVD 법으로 silicon nitride 박막을 절연막으로 형성하고, 다양한 공정 조건에서 펄스 레이저 증착법으로 제작한 ZnO 박막을 증착하여 채널층으로 하였으며, Al 박막을 증착하고 패터닝하여 소스 및 드레인 전극으로 하였다. ZnO 박막의 증착 시에 기판 온도를 다양하게 조절하고 산소 분압을 변화시켜 ZnO 박막의 특성을 조절하였다. 제작된 박막의 표면특성은 AFM(atomic force microscopy)로 분석하고, 결정특성은 XRD(X-ray diffraction)로 조사하였다. ZnO 박막의 전기적 특성은 Hall-van der Pauw 법으로 측정하였고, 광학 투과도(optical transparency)를 UV-visible photometer로 조사하였다. ZnO-TFT 소자는 $10^6$ 수준의 on-off ratio와 $2.4{\sim}6.1cm^2/V{\cdot}s$의 전계효과이동도(field effect mobility)를 보였다.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1998.07g
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• pp.2501-2503
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• 1998

In this paper, the silicon-nitride membrane structure for IR sensor was fabricated through the etching and the direct bonding. The PTO layer as a IR detection layer was deposited on the membrane and its characteristics were measured. The attack of PTO layer during the etching of silicon wafer as well as the thermal isolation of the IR detection layer can be solved through the method of bonding/etching of silicon wafer. Because the PTO layer of c-axial orientation raised thermal polarization without polling, the more integration capability can be achieved. The surface roughness of the membrane was measured by AFM, the micro voids and the non-contacted area were inspected by IR detector, and the bonding interface was observed by SEM. The polarization characteristics and the dielectric characteristics of the PTO layer were measured, too.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.262-266
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• 2020

In this paper, we investigated the effect of the passivation stack with Al₂O₃, hydrogenated silicon nitride (SiN_x:H) stack and Al₂O₃, silicon oxynitride (SiON_x) stack in the n type bifacial solar cell on monocrystalline silicon. SiNx:H and SiON_x films were deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition on the Al₂O₃ thin film deposited by thermal atomic layer deposition. We focus on passivation properties of the two stack structure after laser ablation process in order to improve bifaciality of the cell. Our results showed SiN_x:H with Al₂O₃ stack is 10 mV higher in implied open circuit voltage and 60 ㎲ higher in minority carrier lifetime than SiON_x with Al₂O₃ stack at Ni silicide formation temperature for 1.8% open area ratio. This can be explained by hydrogen passivation at the Al₂O₃/Si interface and Al₂O₃ layer of laser damaged area during annealing.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.147-153
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• 1998

Tungsten nitride is very attractive as absorber for X-ray lithographic mask and as a diffusion barrier for interconnecting metallization in Si VLSI technology. Microstructure of tungsten nitride films prepared by RF magnetron sputtering has been investigated as a function of deposition parameter. The crystal structure of sputtered films on silicon nitride membrane depends strongly on the NJAr gas flow ratio(0~18%1, gas pressure(l0~43mTorr). RF power (60~150W), target-substrate distance(4~8cm). Tungsten nitride films deposited at the $N_2/Ar$ gas flow ratio(- 10%). gas pressure(~10mmTorr), RF power(~150W) and target-substrate distance(6cm) are amorphous, but at other conditions are almost rough -surfaced polycrystalline. Amorphous films are very smooth($3.1\AA$ rms) and expected to be excellent absorber for X-ray mask.