With the advent of the IoT (internet of things) era, there has been discussion on how to efficiently use various information from daily life. In academic and industrial society, various smart devices such as smart watches, smart phones, and smart glasses have been developed and commercialized for narrowing the physical/psychological distance with user information. According to recent developments of smart devices, the contemporary people have desired to check their body information and treat disease by themselves. According to the needs of the time, biological researches by phototherapy/monitoring have been actively conducted. Among various light sources, microLEDs have been spotlighted due to their superior optoelectric properties and stability. In this paper, we would like to review the state-of-the research results on the next-generation biological therapy devices via microLEDs.

Since 2010, polymer-based magnetoelectric (ME) composites have been developed with detailed investigations of multiferroic properties such as piezoelectric, magnetostrictive, and magnetoelectric, etc. In particular, as a piezoelectric polymer, poly(vinylidene fluoride) and its co-polymers have been widely used in ME composites for energy harvesting, health monitoring, environment treatment, and bio-medical applications. In this study, main research trend and selected experimental results of polymer-based ME composites are briefly reviewed with respect to composite structure as well as application field. A conclusion was drawn that the polymer-based ME composites would be feasible as flexible devices or functional membranes in the near future.

In this work, we fabricated oxide on an n-type silicon substrate through local anodic oxidation (LAO) using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The resulting oxide thickness was measured and its correlation with load force, scan speed and applied voltage was analyzed. The surface oxide layer was stripped using a buffered oxide etch. Ohmic contacts were created by applying silver paste on the silicon substrate back face. LAO was performed at approximately 70% humidity. The oxide thickness increased with increasing the load force, the voltage, and reducing the scan speed. We confirmed that LAO/AFM can be used to create both lateral and, to some extent, vertical shapes and patterns, as previously shown in the literature.

TFTs technologies with as high mobility as possible is essential for high-performance large displays. TFTs using nanocrystalline silicon thin films can achieve higher mobility. In this work, the change of the crystalline volume fraction at different hydrogen dilution ratios was investigated by depositing nc-Si:H thin films using PECVD. It was observed that increasing hydrogen dilution ratio increased not only the crystalline volume fraction but also the crystallite size. The thin films with a high crystalline volume fraction (55%) and a low defect density (10¹⁷ cm^-3·eV^-1) were used as top gate TFTs channel layer, leading to a high mobility (55 ㎠/V·s). We suggest that TFTs of high mobility to meet the need of display industries can be benefited by the formation of thin film with high crystalline volume fraction as well as low defect density as a channel layer.

a-Si is commonly considered as a primary candidate for the formation of passivation layer in heterojunction (HIT) solar cells. However, there are some problems when using this material such as significant losses due to recombination and parasitic absorption. To reduce these problems, a wide bandgap material is needed. A wide bandgap has a positive influence on effective transmittance, reduction of the parasitic absorption, and prevention of unnecessary epitaxial growth. In this paper, the adoption of a-SiO_x:H as the intrinsic layer was discussed. To increase lifetime and conductivity, oxygen concentration control is crucial because it is correlated with the thickness, bonding defect, interface density (D_it), and band offset. A thick oxygenrich layer causes the lifetime and the implied open-circuit voltage to drop. Furthermore the thicker the layer gets, the more free hydrogen atoms are etched in thin films, which worsens the passivation quality and the efficiency of solar cells. Previous studies revealed that the lifetime and the implied voltage decreased when the a-SiOx thickness went beyond around 9 nm. In addition to this, oxygen acted as a defect in the intrinsic layer. The D_it increased up to an oxygen rate on the order of 8%. Beyond 8%, the D_it was constant. By controlling the oxygen concentration properly and achieving a thin layer, high-efficiency HIT solar cells can be fabricated.

Indium-doped Mg_0.05Zn_0.95O thin films were deposited on glass substrates by a sol-gel method. Three types of indium precursors such as indium chloride, indium acetate, and indium nitrate were used as doping sources. Physical properties of fabricated thin films were analyzed through XRD (x-ray diffraction), UV-vis spectrophotometer, Hall effect measurement, and EDS (energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy). All In-doped thin films grown in this study exhibited a preferred orientation of (002) with over 80% transmittance. The results showed that the Mg_0.05Zn_0.95O thin film from indium chloride as the indium precursor has higher crystallinity and transmittance with lower resistivity when compared with those from other indium precursors.

For the past several decades, various next-generation patterning methods have been developed to obtain well-designed nano-to-micro structures, such as imprint lithography, nanotransfer printing (nTP), directed self-assembly (DSA), E-beam lithography, and so on. Especially, nTP process has much attention due to its low processing cost, short processing time, and good compatibility with other patterning techniques in achieving the formation of high-resolution functional patterns. To transfer functional patterns onto desirable substrates, the use of soft materials is required for precise replication of master mold. Here, we introduce a simple and practical nTP method to create highly ordered structures using various polymeric replica materials. We found that polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), polystyrene (PS), and polyvinylpyridine (PVP) are possible candidates for replica materials for reliable duplication of Si master mold based on systematic analysis of pattern visualization. Furthermore, we successfully obtained well-defined metal and oxide nanostructures with functionality on target substrates by using replica patterns, through deposition and transfer process. We expect that the several candidates of replica materials can be exploited for effective nanofabrication of complex electronic devices.