• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.290-293
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• 2015

The properties of the IZTO thin films on the glass were studied with a variation of the $SiO_2$ buffer layer thickness. $SiO_2$ buffer layers were deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) on the glass, and the In-Zn-Tin-Oxide (IZTO) thin films were deposited on the buffer layer by RF magnetron sputtering. All the IZTO thin films with the $SiO_2$ buffer layer are shown to be amorphous. Optimum $SiO_2$ buffer layer thickness was obtained through analyzing the structural, morphological, electrical, and optical properties of the IZTO thin films. As a result, the IZTO surface roughness is 0.273 nm with a sheet resistance of $25.32{\Omega}/sq$ and the average transmittance is 82.51% in the visible region, at a $SiO_2$ buffer layer thickness of 40 nm. The result indicates that the uniformity of surface and the properties of the IZTO thin film on the glass were improved by employing the $SiO_2$ buffer layer and the IZTO thin film can be applied well to the transparent conductive oxide for display devices.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.72-76
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• 2015

150-nm-thick In-Zn-Tin-Oxide (IZTO) films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering after a 10 to 50-nm-thick $SiO_2$ buffer layer was deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. The electrical, structural, and optical properties of the IZTO/$SiO_2$/PET films were analyzed with respect to the thickness of the $SiO_2$ buffer layer. The mechanical properties were outstanding at a $SiO_2$ thickness of 50 nm, with a resistivity of $1.45{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}-cm$, carrier concentration of $8.84{\times}10^{20}/cm^3$, hall mobility of $4.88cm^2/Vs$, and average IZTO surface roughness of 12.64 nm. Also, the transmittances were higher than 80%, and the structure of the IZTO films were amorphous, regardless of the $SiO_2$ thickness. These results indicate that these films are suitable for use as a transparent conductive oxide for transparency display devices.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.120-120
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• 2003

The metallic oxide nanomaterials including ZnO, Ga$_2$O$_3$, TiO$_2$, and SnO$_2$ have been synthesized by a number of methods including laser ablation, arc discharge, thermal annealing procedure, catalytic growth processes, and vapor transport. We have been interested in preparing the nanomaterials of Ga$_2$O$_3$, which is a wide band gap semiconductor (E$_{g}$ =4.9 eV) and used as insulating oxide layer for all gallium-based semiconductor. Ga$_2$O$_3$ is stable at high temperature and a transparent oxide, which has potential application in optoelectronic devices. The Ga$_2$O$_3$ nanoparticles and nanobelts were produced using GaN single crystals, which were grown by flux method inside SUS$^{TM}$ cell using a Na flux and exhibit plate-like morphologies with 4 ~ 5 mm in size. In these experiments, the conventional electric furnace was used. GaN single crystals were pulverized in form of powder for the growth of Ga$_2$O$_3$ nanomaterials. The structure, morphology and composition of the products were studied mainly by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM).).

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.90-90
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• 2011

Transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films have been intensively utilized in the electric applications, such as, displays, lightings and solar cells due to the good electric conductivity with an excellent transmittance of the visible light. We, herein present an excellent Al-doped ZnO film (AZO), which has been fabricated by co-sputtering method. An as-deposited AZO film had an optical transmittance of 84.78% at 550 nm and a resistivity of $7.8{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}cm$. A rapid annealing process significantly improved the optical transmittance and electrical resistivity of the AZO film to 99.67% and $1{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}cm$, respectively. The fabricated AZO film was fabricated for a metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) structure. The AZO film-embedding MSM device was highly responsive to a UV light.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.13-16
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• 2012

Zinc oxide (ZnO) films were deposited by an RF magnetron sputtering system with the RF power of 200W and 300W and flow rate of oxygen gases of 20 and 30 sccm, in order to research the growth of ZnO on carbon doped silicon oxide (SiOC) thin film. The reflectance of SiOC film on Si film deposited by the sputtering decreased with increasing the oxygen flow rate in the range of long wavelength. In comparison between ZnO/Si and ZnO/SiOC/Si thin film, the reflectance of ZnO/SiOC/Si film was inversed that of ZnO/Si film in the rage of 200~1000 nm. The transmittance of ZnO film increased with increasing the oxygen gas flow rate because of the transition from conduction band to oxygen interstitial band due to the oxygen interstitial (Oi) sites. The low reflectance and the high transmittance of ZnO film was suitable properties to use for the front electrode in the display or solar cell.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.341-341
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• 2012

Recently, oxide semi-conductor materials have been investigated as promising candidates replacing a-Si:H and poly-Si semiconductor because they have some advantages of a room-temperature process, low-cost, high performance and various applications in flexible and transparent electronics. Particularly, amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO) is an interesting semiconductor material for use in flexible thin film transistor (TFT) fabrication due to the high carrier mobility and low deposition temperatures. In this work, we demonstrated improvement of flexibility in IGZO TFTs, which were fabricated on polyimide (PI) substrate. At first, a thin poly-4vinyl phenol (PVP) layer was spin coated on PI substrate for making a smooth surface up to 0.3 nm, which was required to form high quality active layer. Then, Ni gate electrode of 100 nm was deposited on the bare PVP layer by e-beam evaporator using a shadow mask. The PVP and $Al_2O_3$ layers with different thicknesses were used for organic/inorganic multi gate dielectric, which were formed by spin coater and atomic layer deposition (ALD), respectively, at $200^{\circ}C$. 70 nm IGZO semiconductor layer and 70 nm Al source/drain electrodes were respectively deposited by RF magnetron sputter and thermal evaporator using shadow masks. Then, IGZO layer was annealed on a hotplate at $200^{\circ}C$ for 1 hour. Standard electrical characteristics of transistors were measured by a semiconductor parameter analyzer at room temperature in the dark and performance of devices then was also evaluated under static and dynamic mechanical deformation. The IGZO TFTs incorporating hybrid gate dielectrics showed a high flexibility compared to the device with single structural gate dielectrics. The effects of mechanical deformation on the TFT characteristics will be discussed in detail.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.283.1-283.1
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• 2016

Tin Oxide(SnO2) has been widely investigated as a transparent conducting oxide (TCO) and can be used in optoelectronic devices such as solar cell and flat-panel displays. It would be applicable to fabricating the wide bandgap semiconductor because of its bandgap of 3.6 eV. In addition, SnO2 is commonly used as gas sensors. To fabricate high quality epitaxial SnO2 thin films, a powder sputtering method was used, in contrast to typical sputtering technique with sintered target. Single crystalline sapphire(0001) substrates were used. The samples were prepared with varying the growth parameters such as gas environment and film thickness. Then, the samples were characterized by using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy measurements. We found that the strain evolution of the samples was highly affected by gas environment and growth rate, resulted in the delamination under O2 environment.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.39-43
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• 2016

The structural, electrical properties of Ga doped MgZnO transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films by ratio-frequency(RF) magnetron sputtering were investigated. Ga doped MgZnO TCO films were deposited on the sapphire substrates at $200^{\circ}C$ varying growth thickness 200 to 600 nm. The optical properties of Ga doped MgZnO TCO films were showed above 85% transmittance from 300 to 1000 nm region. In addition, the current density ($J_{SC}$) of $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$ (CIGS) solar cells was improved by using the MgZnO:Ga films of 500 nm thickness because of outstanding electrical properties. The $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$ solar cells with MgZnO:Ga transparent conducing layer yielded an efficiency of 9.8% with current density ($31.8mA/cm^2$), open circuit voltage (540.2 V) and fill factor (62.2) under AM 1.5 illumination.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.207-207
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• 2011

Amorphous transparent oxide semiconductors (a-TOS) have been widely studied for many optoelectronic devices such as AM-OLED (active-matrix organic light emitting diodes). Recently, Nomura et al. demonstrated high performance amorphous IGZO (In-Ga-Zn-O) TFTs.1 Despite the amorphous structure, due to the conduction band minimum (CBM) that made of spherically extended s-orbitals of the constituent metals, an a-IGZO TFT shows high mobility.2,3 But IGZO films contain high cost rare metals. Therefore, we need to investigate the alternatives. Because Aluminum has a high bond enthalpy with oxygen atom and Alumina has a high lattice energy, we try to replace Gallium with Aluminum that is high reserve low cost material. In this study, we focused on the electrical properties of IZO:Al thin films as a channel layer of TFTs. IZO:Al were deposited on unheated non-alkali glass substrates (5 cm ${\times}$ 5 cm) by magnetron co-sputtering system with two cathodes equipped with IZO target and Al target, respectively. The sintered ceramic IZO disc (3 inch ${\phi}$, 5 mm t) and metal Al target (3 inch ${\phi}$, 5 mm t) are used for deposition. The O2 gas was used as the reactive gas to control carrier concentration and mobility. Deposition was carried out under various sputtering conditions to investigate the effect of sputtering process on the characteristics of IZO:Al thin films. Correlation between sputtering factors and electronic properties of the film will be discussed in detail.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.52-52
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• 2018

Only approximately 30% of fossil fuel energy is used; therefore, it is desirable to utilize the huge amounts of waste energy. Thermoelectric (TE) materials that convert heat into electrical power are a promising energy technology. The TE materials can be formed either as thin films or as bulk semiconductors. Generally, thin-film TE materials have low energy conversion rates due to their thinness compared to that in bulk. However, an advantage of a thin-film TE material is that the efficiency can be smartly engineered by controlling the nanostructure and composition. Especially nanostructured TE thin films are useful for mitigating heating problems in highly integrated microelectronic devices by accurately controlling the temperature. Hence, there is a rising interest in thin-film TE devices. These devices have been extensively investigated. It is demonstrated that transparent amorphous oxide semiconductors (TAOS) can be excellent thermoelectric (TE) materials, since their thermal conductivity (${\kappa}$) through a randomly disordered structure is quite low, while their electrical conductivity and carrier mobility (${\mu}$) are high, compared to crystalline semiconductors through the first-principles calculations and the various measurements for the amorphous In-Zn-O (a-IZO) thin film. The calculated phonon dispersion in a-IZO shows non-linear phonon instability, which can prevent the transport of phonon. The a-IZO was measured to have poor ${\kappa}$ and high electrical conductivity compared to crystalline $In_2O_3:Sn$ (c-ITO). These properties show that the TAOS can be an excellent thin-film transparent TE material. It is suggested that the TAOS can be employed to mitigate the heating problem in the transparent display devices.