The effects of various buffer layers on the In2O3 transparent conducting films grown on glass substrates by radio-frequency reactive magnetron sputtering were investigated. The In2O3 thin films were deposited at 400℃ of growth temperature and 100% of oxygen flow rate. The optical, electrical, and structural and morphological properties of the In2O3 thin films subjected to buffer layers were examined by using ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer, Hall-effect measurements, and X-ray diffractometer, respectively. The properties of In2O3 thin films showed different results, depending on the type of buffer layer. As for the In2O3 thin film deposited on ZnO buffer layer, the average transmittance was 89% and the electrical resistivity was 7.4×10-3 Ωcm. The experimental results provide a way for growing the transparent conducting film with the optimum condition by using an appropriate buffer layer.
Modified structure of copper pillar bump which has trapezoidal cross section on the top region is suggested with simulation results and concept of fabrication process. Due to the large surface area of joint region between bump and solder in suggested structure, electro-migration effect can be reduced. Reduction of electro-migration is related with current density and joule heating in bump and investigated with finite element methods with variation of dimensional parameters. Mechanical characteristics are also investigated with comparing modified copper pillar bump and conventional copper pillar bump.
In this study, the influence of the intermolecular distance on the charge mobility in a pentacene thin-film was investigated. In order to increase the mobility which depends on the π-overlap between molecules, the intermolecular distance was shortened by compressive force along the conduction channel. Pentacene thin-film was fabricated on flexible substrates bent outward at different radii to stretch the gate dielectric surface and then the substrates were unbent, producing the compressive force to the film. The result showed that the mobility increased proportionally to the strain applied during the pentacen deposition and the molecular packing inside a grain was not optimal for the charge transport.
In this study, lead-free (Na0.465K0.465Bi0.07)(Nb0.93Ti0.07)O3-0.08MnO2 ceramics were fabricated by conventional mixed oxide method. Structural and electrical properties of lead-free (Na0.465K0.465Bi0.07)(Nb0.93Ti0.07)O3-0.08MnO2 ceramics with the variation of sintering temperature were investigated. As results of x-ray diffraction analysis, all specimens showed a typical polycrystalline perovskite structure without presence of the second phase. Sintered density increased with an increases of sintering temperature and the specimen sintered at 1,020℃ showed the maximum value of 4.5 g/cm3. The average grain size of the (Na0.465K0.465Bi0.07)(Nb0.93Ti0.07)O3-0.08MnO2 specimen sintered at 1,020℃ is about 0.83 μm. Electromechanical coupling factor, relative dielectric constant and dielectric loss of (Na0.465K0.465Bi0.07)(Nb0.93Ti0.07)O3-0.08MnO2 specimens sintered at 1,020℃ were 0.252, 741 and 0.043% respectively.
A road energy harvester was designed and fabricated to convert mechanical energy from the vehicle load to electrical energy. The road energy harvester is composed of 24 piezoelectric cantilevers and a vehicle load transfer mechanism. Applying a vehicle load transfer mechanism rather than directly installing energy harvesters under roads decreases the area of road construction and allows more energy harvesters to be installed on the side of the road. The power generation amount with respect to the vehicular velocity change was assessed by installing the vehicle load transfer mechanism and the energy harvester in the form of speed bumps and underground. The energy harvester installed in a speed bump form generated power of 7.61 ㎽at the vehicular velocity of 20 km/h. Also, power generation of the energy harvester installed in the underground form was 63.9 ㎽at the vehicular velocity of 28 km/h. Although the number of piezoelectric cantilevers was reduced by 1/3 to 24 in comparison to the previous research results with 72 piezoelectric cantilevers, similar power generation characteristic value was obtained within the vehicular velocity of 20 km/h by altering the vehicle load transfer mechanism and cantilever vibration method.
In this paper, we have theoretically analyzed and designed a dielectric multi-layer sensor with a SPR (surface plasmon resonance) using analytical calculation and FDTD (finite difference time-domain) methods. The proposed structure is composed of periodic layer and thin metal film. It has many advantages. One of that is a high sensitivity of the SPR. Another is a high Q-factor of the characteristics in the PhC (photonic crystals) micro-cavity structure. The incident light has double resonance characteristics, because the filtered light by PhC structure, dielectric multi-layer, is met the thin metal film for SPR effect. We have also observed the change of resonance characteristics according to the variation of effective index on the metal film.
We report on variations of electrical properties with different active layer thickness and post-annealing temperature in amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). In particular, subthreshold swing (SS) of the IGZO-TFTs was improved as increasing the active layer thickness at an given post-annealing temperature, accompanying the negative shift in turn-off voltage. However, as increasing post-annealing temperature, only turn-off voltage was shifted negatively with almost constant SS value. The effect of the active layer thickness and post-annealing temperature on electrical properties, such as SS, field effect mobility and turn-off voltage in IGZO-TFTs has been explained in terms of the variation of trap density in IGZO channel layer and at gate dielectric/IGZO interface.
We present the results of a study of the polarizing photovoltaic (PV) effects in an aligned polymer bulk heterojuction PV layer. The fairly uniform in-plane uniaxial alignment of the PV layer with a macroscopic axial orientational order parameter of 0.40 was achieved by means of a simple rubbing technique. Moreover, reflective polarizing PSCs having the aligned PV layers were applied to power-generating reflective type liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which exhibited a maximum contrast ratio of 1.7. These results form a promising foundation for various energy harvesting polarization dependent opto-electrical LCD device applications.
We herein present results of flat and uniform polymer-blended small molecular semiconductor thin films. Which were produced for organic thin film transistors (OTFTs), using a simple pre-metered horizontal dipping process. The organic semiconducting thin films were composed of 6,13-bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)-pentacene (TIPS-PEN) composite blended with a polymer binder of poly(α-methylstyrene) (PaMS). We show that the pre-metered horizontal-dip-coating(H-dip-coating) process allowed the critical control of the thickness of the blended TIPS-PEN:PaMs thin film. The fabricated OTFTs using the TIPS-PEN:PaMs films exhibited maximum field-effect mobility of 0.22 cm2 V-1 s-1. These results demonstrated that H-dip-coated TIPS-PEN:PaMS films show considerable promise for the production of reliable, reproducible, and high-performance OTFTs.
DSSCs efficiency by thickness of TiO2 photoelectrode and thickness differences between two substrates studied. DSSCs is made of the doctor blade method and photoelectrode annealing temperature elevated in a different ways. In addition, cells efficiencies of according to the different thickness between TiO2 photoelectrode substrate and Pt counter electrode was measured. Efficiency of DSSCs made with TiO2 photoelectrode of 18 ㎛thickness and the gap difference between the substrate 28 ㎛shows a highest 4.805% efficiency.
In this study, transparent conducting Al-doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) films with a thickness of 150 nm were prepared on corning glass substrate by the RF magnetron sputtering with using a Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO), (Al2o3: 2 wt%) target at room temperature. This study investigated the effect of rapid thermal annealing temperature and oxygen ambient on structural, electrical and optical properties of Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films. The films were annealed at temperatures ranging from 400 to 700℃ by using Rapid thermal equipment in oxygen ambient. The effect of RTA treatment on the structural properties were studied by x-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy. It is observed that the Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin film annealed at 500℃ at 5 minute oxygen ambient gas reveals the strongest XRD emission intensity and narrowest full width at half maximum among the temperature studied. The enhanced UV emission from the film annealed at 500℃ at 5 minute oxygen ambient gas is attributed to the improved crystalline quality of Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin film due to the effective relaxation of residual compressive stress and achieving maximum grain size.
In this study, we have coated the inner surface of YSZ channel using LSM powder ink through depressurization process for making the cathode of a stacked planar-type SOFC module. To coat the surface of YSZ channel uniformly, we tried to find the optimum manufacturing condition for LSM ink. We used four different dispersants (BYK series) and two different solvents (ethanol and DMF) to make the LSM ink. It was revealed that the ink made with the ethanol solvent and the BYK-111 dispersant has the lowest viscosity, relatively low contact angle and most excellent dispersibility. After depressurizing a chamber filled with LSM ink and sintered YSZ channel, we have found that the YSZ channel was uniformly coated with LSM cathode. The LSM ink with 25 vol% BYK-111 showed the most uniform coating.
As an alternative energy, Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have received much attention due to low cost manufacturing procedure and high energy consumption rate. Incorporating scattering centers in the nanocrystalline photoanode or additional scattering layers on the nanocrystalline photoanode is an effective way to enhance the light harvest efficiency of the photoanode and the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The light scattering abilities of these scattering layers also depend on the relative sizes and phase of the particles in the layers. A higher surface area is normally obtained using large particle sizes. Therefore, transparent high surface area TiO2 layers and an additional scattering layer consisting of TiO2 -Rutile 500 ㎚paste with relatively larger particles are attractive. In this work, we investigates the applicability of a hybrid TiO2 electrode (or a working electrode with a light scattering layer) in a DSSCs. We fabrication various thin film using TiO2 paste 20 ㎚and TiO2 paste 500 ㎚. As a result, the efficiency of the a single structure thin film was 3.35% and the efficiency as scattering layer of hybrid structure thin film was 4.36%, 4.73%.
Indium tin oxide (ITO) films were prepared using radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering method. magnets were equipped near the target in the sputter to bring the plasma near the target. The effect of magnetic field that brings the plasma near the substrate was compared with that of substrate heating. The effect of substrate heating on the grain size of the ITO thin film was larger than that of the magnetic field. However, the grain size of the ITO thin film was larger when the magnetic field was applied near the substrate during the sputtering process than when the substrate was not heated and the magnetic field was not applied. If stronger magnetic field is applied near the substrate during sputtering, it can be expected that the ITO thin film with good electrical conductivity and high transparency is obtained at low substrate temperature. When magnetic field of 90 Gauss was applied near the substrate during sputtering, the mobility of the ITO thin film increased from 15.2 ㎠/V.s to 23.3 ㎠/V.s, whereas the sheet resistivity decreased from 7.68 Ω·㎝ to 5.11 Ω·㎝.
We investigated the speed change of the diamond spherical abrasive during the substrate surface polishing under the pad compression by using classical molecular dynamics modeling. We performed three-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations using the Morse potential functions for the copper substrate and the Tersoff potential function for the diamond abrasive. As the compressive pressure increased, the indented depth of the diamond abrasive increased and then, the speed of the diamond abrasive along the direction of the pad moving was decreased. Molecular simulation result such as the abrasive speed decreasing due to the pad pressure increasing gave important information for the chemical mechanical polishing including the mechanical removal rate with both the pad speed and the pad compressive pressure.