In this paper, we investigated the etching characteristics of the TaN thin films and the surface reaction of TaN thin films after etching process. The etching characteristics of the TaN thin films were carried out using inductively coupled plasma (ICP). The etch rate and the selectivity of TaN to SiO2 and TaN to PR were measured by varying the gas mixing ratio, RF power, DC-bias voltage, and process pressure in CF-based plasma. The surface reaction of TaN thin films were determined by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

Aerosol deposition(AD) coating that enable fabricate films at low temperature have begun to be widely researched for the integration of ceramics as well to realize high-speed deposition rates. For application of ceramic thick film by AD to display and electronic ceramic industry, fabrication of dense structure with a no cracking is required. In this study, to fabricate dense ceramic thick film, the effect of crystal phase of starting powder was investigated. For this study, amorphous and crystalline SiO2 powders were used as starting powders. Two types of SiO2 powders were deposited on glass substrate by AD. In the case of amorphous SiO2 powder, the deposited films had extremely incompact and opaque layer, irrespective of particle size. In contrast to amorphous powder, in the case of crystalline powder, porous structure layer and dense microstructure with no cracking layer were fabricated depending on the particle size. The optimized starting powder size for dense coating layer was 1∼2 μm. The transmittance of film reached a maximum of 76% at 800 nm.

In this paper, we designed a charge pump circuit using level shifter for LED driver IC. The designed circuit makes the 15 V output voltage from the 5 V input in condition of 50 kHz switching frequency. The prototype chip which include the proposed charge pump circuit and its several internal sub-blocks such as oscillator, level shifter was fabricated using a 0.35 um 20 V BCD process technology. The size of the fabricated prototype chip is 2,350 um × 2,350 um. We examined performances of the fabricated chip and compared its measured results with SPICE simulation data.

SiO2 layer grown by rapid thermal oxidation and SiNx layer were used for passivating the surface of n-type silicon solar cell, instead of only SiNx layer generally used in photovoltaic industry. The rapid thermal oxidation provides the reduction of processing time and avoids bulk life time degradation during the processing. Improvement of 30 mV in Voc and 2.7 mA/cm2 in Jsc was obtained by applying these two layers. This improvement led to fabrication of a large area (239 cm2) n-type solar cell with 17.34% efficiency. Internal quantum efficiency measurement indicates that the improvement comes from the front side passivation, but not the rear side, by using SiO2/SiNx stack.

PTCR ceramics of (Ba0.998Sm0.002)TiO3 + 0.001MnCO3 + xSiO2 (x=1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 mol%) were fabricated by solid state method. Disk samples of diameter 5 mm and thickness about 1mm were sintered at 1,290℃ for 2 h in reduced atmosphere of 5%H2-95%N2 followed by re-oxidation at 600℃ for 30 min. in 20%O2-80%N2.and their microstructures and electrical properties were investigated with SEM and Multimeter. The color of sintered samples was strongly dependent on SiO2 content showing that the color of samples with SiO2 of 1∼2 mol% was gray but that of samples with SiO2 of 4∼6 mol% was changed from gray to blue, which seems to be related with the reduction of samples due to the oxygen vacancies created during the sintering in reduced atmosphere. SiO2 content had a great influence on the microstructure and the electrical properties. With increasing SiO2 content, the grain size of samples increased and the resistivity as well as the resistivity jump (R285/Rmin) decreased, which is considered to be attributed to the resistivity change at grain interior and grain boundary due to the fast mass transfer through SiO2 liquide phase during the sintering. Samples with 2 mol% SiO2 has the resistivity of 202 Ω cm and the resistivity jump of 3.28. It is expected that SiO2 doped BaTiO3 based PTC ceramics can be used for multilayered PTC thermistor due to the resistance to the sintering in reduced atmosphere.

According to the composition of LTCC material, though it was thought that bulk defect which was made in forming process effects on the densification during the sintering, it was not reported systemically. In this study, we evaluated crystal structure, 3 point bending strength, hardness and microstructure of the samples by uniaxial pressing and tape casting using the commercial powders of the crystallizing glass and the glass/ceramic composite. In the case of glass/ceramic composite, Viox-001 powder with residual glass in the sintering, 3 point bending strength was similar regardless of forming process due to fill the bulk defect by residual glass. In the case of crystallizing glass, MLS-22, because glass phase was small in the sintering, glass did not fill the pore in the sample by uniaxial pressing process, therefore, the 3 point bending strength of it was 167 MPa. However, the 3 point bending strength of the sample by tape casting was 352 MPa and much higher. Meanwhile, crystal structure and hardness were similar regardless of forming process.

The properties of LTCC green sheets formed by the MLS-22 powder of NEG Inc. were investigated for acrylic binders with different PVB and Tg in the variation of temperature. The elongation of the green sheets showed large variation depending on the temperature, and was rapidly decreased near the Tg of the sheets. With the increase of the ratio of plasticizer/binder (P/B), large elongation of the sheets was observed due to the decrease of the Tg. In the stacking process of the multilayer ceramic, the optimal control of the temperature is highly required depending on the Tg of the binder and the ratio of P/Buniform coating.

In this study we aims to examine the effects of Co3O4 and NiO doping on the defects and electrical properties in ZnO-Bi2O3-Sb2O3 (Sb/Bi=0.5) varistors. It seemed to form □(0.20 eV) and □(0.33 eV) as dominant defects in Co and Ni co-doped ZBS system, however only □appeared in Co- or Ni-doped ZBS. Even though the same defects it was different in capacitance (1.5∼4.5 nF) and resistance (0.3∼9.5 kΩ). The varistor characteristics were improved with Co and Co+Ni doping (non-linear coefficient, α= 36 and 29, relatively) in ZBS. The various parameters (Nd= 1.43∼2.33×1017 cm-3, Nt=1.40∼ 2.28×1012 cm-2, Φb= 1.76∼2.37 V, W= 98∼118 nm) calculated from the C-V characteristics in our systems did not depend greatly on the type of dopant, which were in the range of a typical ZnO varistors. It should be derived a improved C-V equation carefully for more reliable parameters because the variation of the varistor capacitance as a function of the applied dc voltage is depend on the defect, frequency, and temperature.

Niobium oxide(Nb2O5) films were deposited on p-type Si wafers at room temperature using in-line pulsed-DC magnetron sputtering system with various frequencies. The different duty ratios were obtained by varying the frequency of pulsed DC power from 100 to 300 kHz at the fixed reverse time of 1.5 μs. From the thickness of the sputtered NbOx films, it was possible to obtain much higher deposition rate in case of pulsed-DC sputtering than RF sputtering. However, the similar leakage currents and structural characteristics were obtained from the metal-insulator-semiconductor(MIS) structure fabricated with the NbOx films and the x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) results in spite of the different deposition rates. From the experimental results, the NbOx films sputtered by pulsed-DC sputtering are expected to be used in the fabrication process instead of RF sputtering.

In this paper, semiconducting shield specimens for a DC cable os fabricated and characterized by measurement of volume resistance, tensile strength, and the coefficient of expansion to show the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the semiconducting shield. Due to the PTC phenomenon, the volume resistance at 25℃ increases rapidly in comparison to the volume resistance at 90℃. Since the compounding ration of carbon black is low, the tensile strength and density become lower and the coefficient of expansion is increased. As the general specification of the tensile strength and density is 0.8 kgf/mm2 and 150%, respectively, the fabricated specimen in this paper has excellent mechanical characteristic.

IGZO thin films have been prepared by RF magnetron sputtering. The structural, electrical and optical properties of the IGZO thin films have been investigated as a function of deposition condition. XRD analysis of IGZO thin films showed a typical crystallographic orientation with c-axis perpendicular regardless of deposition conditions. The carrier mobility, carrier concentration and resistivity of the IGZO films sputtered at 200 W, 1mTorr and 300℃ were 28.5 cm2/V·sec, 2.6×1020 cm3, 8.8×10-4 Ω·cm respectively. The optical transmittance were higher than 80% at visible region regardless of the deposition conditions under the experiments above, and specifically higher than 90% at wave length over 500 nm. The absorption edge was shifted to shorter wavelength with increase of carrier concentration.

Fe3O4(magnetite) having half metallic property attracts great attention material with high curie temperature in spintronics. Fe3O4 thin films and nanowires were grown onto c-Al2O3(0001) at various substrate temperatures. Fe3O4 films deposited from 300 to 600℃ are influenced by thermal stress induced from mismatch of thermal expansion coefficient between Fe3O4 and Al2O3 (0001) substrate. The Fe3O4 nanowires grown at 640℃ showed a diameter of 130 nm and a length of 2-10 μm. The nanowire arrays fabricated by pulsed laser deposition technique have high coercivity(Hc) of 608 Oe and Squareness(Mr/Ms) of 0.68 in perpendicular direction.

The series connection-type superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) with two magnetically coupled circuits was suggested and its effectiveness through the analysis on the current limiting and recovery characteristics was described. The fault current limiting characteristics of the proposed SFCL as well as the load voltage sag compensating characteristics according to the winding direction were investigated. To confirm the fault current limiting and the voltage sag suppressing characteristics of the this SFCL, the short-circuit tests for the simulated power system with the series connection-type SFCL were carried out. The series connection-type SFCL designed with the additive polarity winding was shown to perform more effective fault current limiting and load voltage sag compensating operations through the fast quench occurrence right after the fault appears and the fast recovery operation after the fault removes than that with the subtractive polarity winding.

Crystalline silicon solar cells with SiNx/SiNx and SiNx/SiOx double layer anti-reflection coatings(ARC) were studied in this paper. Optimizing passivation effect and optical properties of SiNx and SiOx layer deposited by PECVD was performed prior to double layer application. When the refractive index (n) of silicon nitride was varied in range of 1.9∼2.3, silicon wafer deposited with silicon nitride layer of 80 nm thickness and n= 2.2 showed the effective lifetime of 1,370 ㎛. Silicon nitride with n= 1.9 had the smallest extinction coefficient among these conditions. Silicon oxide layer with 110 nm thickness and n= 1.46 showed the extinction coefficient spectrum near to zero in the 300∼1,100 nm region, similar to silicon nitride with n= 1.9. Thus silicon nitride with n= 1.9 and silicon oxide with n= 1.46 would be proper as the upper ARC layer with low extinction coefficient, and silicon nitride with n=2.2 as the lower layer with good passivation effect. As a result, the double layer AR coated silicon wafer showed lower surface reflection and so more light absorption, compared with SiNx single layer. With the completed solar cell with SiNx/SiNx of n= 2.2/1.9 and SiNx/SiOx of n= 2.2/1.46, the electrical characteristics was improved as ΔVoc= 3.7 mV, ΔJsc= 0.11 mA/cm2 and Δ Voc= 5.2 mV, ΔJsc= 0.23 mA/cm2, respectively. It led to the efficiency improvement as 0.1% and 0.23%.

White light emitting diode (LED) determined the most appropriate color temperature in reading lighting evaluated fatigue degree of eye according to color temperature. The eye fatigue degrees are determined by brightness and color temperature. Therefore, we measured the results of eyes test according to the change of color temperature and brightness. Experiments except for astigmatic corrected visual acuity of 0.8 more and age 20 to 25 years old, male and female college students was conducted in 100 patients. And constant illumination conditions, visual acuity was measured by varying the color temperature. The optometry at 10 minutes in the darkroom adapted eye. And then the temperature of 25±3 degrees, the humidity was carried out at 50±5%. As a result of typical color temperature of white light (5,600 K) has identification of the readability.