Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) provide a high level of security for private keys using unique physical characteristics of hardware. However, fabricating PUF chips requires numerous semiconductor processes, leading to high costs, which limits their applications. In this work, we introduce a low-cost manufacturing method for PUF security chips. First, surface roughening through wet-etching is utilized to create random variables. Additionally, physical vapor deposition is added to further enhance randomness. After PUF chip fabrication, both Hamming distance (HD) and Hamming weight (HW) are extracted and compared to verify the fabricated chip. It is confirmed that the PUF chip using two different multiple process variables demonstrates superior uniqueness and uniformity compared to the PUF security chip fabricated using only a single process variable.
As complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) is scaled down to achieve higher chip density, thin-film layers have been deposited iteratively. The poor film uniformity resulting from deposition or chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) significantly affects chip yield. Therefore, the development of novel fabrication processes to enhance film uniformity is required. In this context, high-pressure deuterium annealing (HPDA) is proposed to reduce the surface roughness resulting from the CMP. The HPDA is carried out in a diluted deuterium atmosphere to achieve cost-effectiveness while maintaining high pressure. To confirm the effectiveness of HPDA, time-of-flight secondary-ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) are employed. It is confirmed that the absorbed deuterium gas facilitates the diffusion of silicon atoms, thereby reducing surface roughness.
Generally, diamond-like carbon films (a-C:H, DLC) have been shown to have a low coefficient of friction, a high hardness and a low wear rate. Pd-doped C thin film was fabricated using a dual magnetron sputtering with two targets of graphite and palladium. Graphite target RF power was fixed and palladium target RF power was varied. The structural, physical, and surface properties of the deposited thin film were investigated, and the correlation among these properties was examined. The doping ratio of Pd increased as the RF power increased, and the surface roughness of the thin film decreased somewhat as the RF power increased. In addition, the hardness value of the thin film increased, and the adhesive strength was improved. It was confirmed that the value of the contact angle indicating the surface energy increases as the RF power increases. It was concluded that the increase in RF power contributed to the improvement of the physical properties of Pd-doped C thin film.
In this work, the effect of sputtering working pressure for the tellurium film and its thin-film transistor was investigated. The transfer characteristics of tellurium thin-film transistors were improved by increasing the working pressure during sputtering process. As increasing working pressure, physical and optical properties of Te films such as crystallinity, transmittance, and surface roughness were improved. Therefore, the improved transfer characteristics of Te thin-film transistors may originate from both improved interface properties between the silicon oxide gate dielectric layer and the tellurium active layer with an improved quality of Te film. In conclusion, the control of working pressure during sputtering would be important for obtaining highperformance tellurium-based thin film transistor.
In the case of ZnO:Al thin films, it is the best material that can replace ITO that is mainly used as a transparent electrode in electronic devices such as solar cells and flat-panel displays. In this study, ZnO:Al films were fabricated by using the RF dual magnetron sputtering method at various substrate temperatures. As the substrate temperature increased, the crystallinity of the ZnO:Al thin films was improved, and the electrical conductivity and electrical properties of the thin film improved owing to the increase in grain size. In addition, the surface roughness of the ZnO:Al thin films increased due to changes in the surface and density of the thin films. Moreover, the substrate temperature increased the density of thin films and improved their transmittance. To be applied to solar cells and other several electronic devices in the future, the hardness and adhesion properties of the thin film improve as the substrate temperature increases.
In this study, we tried finding new materials to improve the stain resistance properties of polymer insulating materials. Using the filtered vacuum arc source (FVAS) with a graphite target source, DLC thin films were deposited on silicon and polymer insulator substrates depending on their thickness to confirm the surface properties, physical properties, and structural properties of the thin films. Subsequently, the possibility of using a DLC thin film as a protective coating material for polymer insulators was confirmed. DLC thin films manufactured in accordance with the thickness of various thin films exhibited a very smooth and uniform surface. As the thin film thickness increased, the surface roughness value decreased and the contact angle value increased. In addition, the elastic modulus and hardness of the DLC thin film slightly increased, and the maximum values of elastic modulus and hardness were 214.5 GPa and 19.8 GPa, respectively. In addition, the DLC thin film showed a very low leakage current value, thereby exhibiting electrical insulation properties.
ZnO thin films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering and then diffused by using an As source in the ampouletube. Also, the ZnO p-n homojunction was made by using As-doped ZnO thin films, and its properties were analyzed. After the As doping, the surface roughness increased, the crystal quality deteriorated, and the full width at half maximum was increased. The As-doped ZnO thin films showed typical p-type properties, and their resistivity was as low as 2.19×10-3 Ωcm, probably because of the in-diffusion from an external As source and out-diffusion from the GaAs substrate. Also, the ZnO p-n junction displayed the typical rectification properties of a p-n junction. Therefore, the As diffusion method is effective for obtaining ZnO films with p-type properties.
ZnO:Al thin films were deposited on glass substrate by RF magnetron sputtering followed by in situ heat treatment in the same chamber. Effects of in situ heat treatment on properties of ZnO:Al thin films were investigated in this study. As heat treatment temperature was increased, crystal quality was improved first and then it was deteriorated, surface roughness was decreased, and sheet resistance was also decreased. The decrease in sheet resistance was caused by increasing carrier concentration due to decreased surface roughness. The decrease in surface roughness resulted in increase of transmittance. Therefore, in situ heat treatment is an effective method for obtaining films with better electrical characteristics.
The Ag thin film of YBCO (yttrium barium copper oxide) CC (coated conductor) protect the YBCO layer and, at the same time, affects the electrical characteristics of the YBCO CC. Therefore, YBCO CC with the commercialization of the Ag thin film layers makes it easy to establish a process, it can lead to a variety of characteristic changes in YBCO CC. In this paper, plasma surface treatment was carried out to facilitate the deposition of the Ag thin film and the deposition process of YBCO CC. Surface roughness from the test results was increased as the time of the plasma surface treatment increased from 5 to 20 minutes. On the other hand, the surface roughness was decreased for the time of the plasma surface treatment over 20 minutes. Furthermore, after depositing, the increasing of deposit amount and reduced lifting phenomenon showed a similar tendency with the rise time of surface roughness.
Mo doped carbon (C:Mo) thin films were fabricated with various Mo target power densities by unbalanced magnetron sputtering (UBM). The effects of target power density on the surface, structural, and electrical properties of C:Mo films were investigated. UBM sputtered C:Mo thin films exhibited smooth and uniform surfaces. However, the rms surface roughness of C:Mo films were increased with the increase of target power density. Also, the resistivity value of C:Mo film as electrical properties was decreased with the increase of target power density. From the performance of organic thin filml transistor using conductive C:Mo gate electrode, the carrier mobility, threshold voltage, and on/off ratio of drain current (Ion/Ioff) showed 0.16 cm2/V·s, -6.0 V, and 7.7×104, respectively.
Titanium oxide (TiO2) thin films were synthesized on polymer insulator and Si substrates by atomic layer deposition (ALD) method. The surface and electrical properties of TiO2 films synthesized at various ALD cycle numbers were investigated. The synthesized TiO2 films exhibited higher contact angle and smooth surface. The contact angle of TiO2 films was increased with the increase of ALD-cycle number. Also, the rms surface roughness of films was slightly rough with the increase of ALD-cycle number. The leakage current on TiO2 film surface synthesized at various conditions were uniformed, and the values were decreased with the increase of ALD-cycle number. In the results, the performance of TiO2 films for self-cleaning critically depended on a number of ALD-cycle.
Titanium oxide (TiO2) thin films were fabricated by unbalanced magnetron (UBM) sputtering. The fabricated TiO2 films were treated by oxygen plasma under various RF powers. We investigated the characteristics of oxygen plasma treatment on the surface, structural, and physical properties of TiO2 films prepared at various plasma treatment RF powers. UBM sputtered TiO2 films exhibited higher contact angle value, smooth surface, and amorphous structure. However, the rms surface roughness TiO2 films were rough, and the contact angle value was decreased with the increase of the plasma treatment RF power Also, the hardness value of TiO2 film as physical properties was slightly increased with the increase of the plasma treatment RF power. In the results, the performance of TiO2 films for self cleaning critically depended on the with the plasma treatment RF power.
We investigated the characterizations of carbon films fabricated by dual magnetron sputtering under various RF powers for the improvement of physical properties in carbon fiber (CF). All sputtered carbon films exhibited amorphous structure, regardless of RF powers, resulting in uniform and smooth surfaces. The hardness and elastic modulus are increased with the increase of RF power, and the adhesion and friction properties of carbon films were improved with the increase of RF power. In the results, The increase of RF power in the sputtering method improved tribological properties of the carbon films, and these attributes can be expected to improve the physical properties of the carbon fiber reinforcement plastics.
TiC thin films were deposited on Si wafer by unbalanced magnetron sputtering (UBMS) system with two targets of graphite and titanium. During the TiC sputtering, the RF power was varied from 100 W to 175 W and the physical and electrical properties of TiC films were investigated. The hardness and rms surface roughness of TiC films were improved with increasing RF power and the maximum hardness about 24 GPa and the minimum rms surface roughness about 1.2 nm were obtained. The resistivity of TiC films was decreased with increasing RF power. Consequently, the physical and electrical properties of TiC film wewe improved with increasing RF power.
Heteroepitaxial InP films have been grown on GaAs substrates to study the effects of the nucleation layer`s surface roughness on the epitaxial layer`s quality. For this, InP nucleation layers were grown at 400℃ with various ethyldimethylindium (EDMIn) flow rates and durations of growth, annealed at 620℃ for 10 minutes and then InP epitaxial layers were grown at 550℃. It has been found that the nucleation layer`s surface roughness is a critical factor on the epitaxial layer`s quality. When a nucleation layer is grown with an EDMIn flow rate of 2.3 μmole/min for 12 minutes, the surface roughness of the nucleation layer is minimum and the successively grown epitaxial layer`s qualities are comparable to those of the homoepitaxial InP layers reported. The minimum full width at half maximum of InP (200) x-ray diffraction peak and that of near-band-edge peak from a 4.4 K photoluminescence are 60 arcmin and 6.33 meV, respectively.
Rhenium-Iridium(Re-Ir) thin films were deposited onto the tungsten carbide(WC) molding core by sputtering system. The Re-Ir films were prepared by multi-target sputtering with iridium, rhenium and chromium as the sources. Argon and nitrogen were inlet into the chamber to be the plasma and reactive gases. The Re-Ir thin films were prepared with targets having atomic percent of 3:7 and the Re-Ir thin films were formed with 240 nm thickness. The Re-Ir thin films on tungsten carbide molding core were analyzed by scanning electron microscope(SEM) and surface roughness. Also, adhesion strength and coefficient friction of Re-Ir thin film were examined. The Re-Ir coating technique has been intensive efforts in the field of coating process because the coating technique and process have been their feature, like hardness, high elasticity, abrasion resistance and mechanical stability and also have been applied widely the industrial and biomedical areas. In this report, tungsten carbide(WC) molding core was manufactures using high performance precision machining and the efforts of Re-Ir coating on the surface roughness.
Properties of ZrO2 Gas Barrier Film using Facing Target Sputtering System with Low Temperature Deposition Process for Flexible Displays Ji Hwan Kim, Do Hyun Cho, Sun Young Sohn, Hwa Min Kim, Jong Jae Kim Journal of Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Materials Engineers.2009; 22(5): 425. CrossRef
Process Characteristics of SiOx and SiOxNy Films on a Gas Barrier Layer using Facing Target Sputtering (FTS) System Jin Woon Son, Yong Jin Park, Sun Young Sohn, Hwa Min Kim Journal of Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Materials Engineers.2009; 22(12): 1028. CrossRef