• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.268-268
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• 2012

Atmospheric pressure microwave induced plasmas are used to excite and ionize chemical species for elemental analysis, for plasma reforming, and for plasma surface treatment. Microwave plasma differs significantly from other plasmas and has several interesting properties. For example, the electron density is higher in microwave plasma than in radio-frequency (RF) or direct current (DC) plasma. Several types of radical species with high density are generated under high electron density, so the reactivity of microwave plasma is expected to be very high [1]. Therefore, useful applications of atmospheric pressure microwave plasmas are expected. The surface characteristics of SUS304 stainless steel are investigated before and after surface modification by microwave plasma under atmospheric pressure conditions. The plasma device was operated by power sources with microwave frequency. We used a device based on a coaxial transmission line resonator (CTLR). The atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) in the case of microwave frequency (880 MHz) used Ar as plasma gas [2]. Typical microwave Pw was 3-10 W. To determine the optimal processing conditions, the surface treatment experiments were performed using various values of Pw (3-10 W), treatment time (5-120 s), and ratios of mixture gas (hydrogen peroxide). Torch-to-sample distance was fixed at the plasma edge point. Plasma treatment of a stainless steel plate significantly affected the wettability, contact angle (CA), and free energy (mJ/$m^2$) of the SUS304 surface. CA and ${\gamma}$ were analyzed. The optimal surface modification parameters to modify were a power of 10 W, a treatment time of 45 s, and a hydrogen peroxide content of 0.6 wt% [3]. Under these processing conditions, a CA of just $9.8^{\circ}$ was obtained. As CA decreased, wettability increased; i.e. the surface changed from hydrophobic to hydrophilic. From these results, 10 W power and 45 s treatment time are the best values to minimize CA and maximize ${\gamma}$.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.244-260
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• 2018

Issues in the electrical characterization of semiconducting photoanodes in a photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell, such as the cell geometry dependence, scan rate dependence in DC measurements, and the frequency dependence in AC measurements, are addressed, using the example of a $TiO_2$ photoanode. Contrary to conventional constant phase element (CPE) modeling, the capacitive behavior associated with Mott-Schottky (MS) response was successfully modeled by a Havriliak-Negami (HN) capacitance function-which allowed the determination of frequency-independent Schottky capacitance parameters to be explained by a trapping mechanism. Additional polarization can be successfully described by the parallel connection of a Bisquert transmission line (TL) model for the diffusion-recombination process in the nanostructured $TiO_2$ electrode. Instead of shunt CPEs generally employed for the non-ideal TL feature, TL models with ideal shunt capacitors can describe the experimental data in the presence of an infinite-length Warburg element as internal interfacial impedance - a characteristic suggested to be a generic feature of many electrochemical cells. Fully parametrized impedance spectra finally allow in-depth physicochemical interpretations.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.174-179
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• 2011

Ultra-thin aluminum (Al) and tin (Sn) films were grown by dc magnetron sputtering on a glass substrate. The electrical resistance R of films was measured in-situ method during the film growth. Also transmission electron microscopy (TEM) study was carried out to observe the microstructure of the films. In the ultra-thin film study, an exact determination of a coalescence thickness and a continuous film thickness is very important. Therefore, we tried to measure the minimum thickness for continuous film (dmin) by means of a graphical method using a number of different y-values as a function of film thickness. The raw date obtained in this study provides a graph of in-situ resistance of metal film as a function of film thickness. For the Al film, there occurs a maximum value in a graph of in-situ electrical resistance versus film thickness. Using the results in this study, we could define clearly the minimum thickness for continuous film where the position of minimum values in the graph when we put the value of Rd3 to y-axis and the film thickness to x-axis. The measured values for the minimum thickness for continuous film are 21 nm and 16 nm for sputtered Al and Sn films, respectively. The new method for defining the minimum thickness for continuous film in this study can be utilized in a basic data when we design an ultra-thin film for the metallization application in nano-scale devices.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.28-33
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• 2011

This paper describes the fabrication of AlN thin films containing iron and iron nitride particles, and the magnetic and electrical properties of such films. Fe-N-Al alloy films were deposited in Ar and $N_2$ mixtures at ambient temperature using Fe/Al composite targets in a two-facing-target DC sputtering system. X-ray diffraction results showed that the Fe-N-Al films were amorphous, and after annealing for 5 h both AlN and bcc-Fe/bct-$FeN_x$ phases appeared. Structure changes in the $FeN_x$ phases were explained in terms of occupied nitrogen atoms. Electron diffraction and transmission electron microscopy observations revealed that iron and iron nitride particles were randomly dispersed in annealed AlN films. The grain size of magnetic particles ranged from 5 to 20 nm in diameter depending on annealing conditions. The saturation magnetization as a function of the annealing time for the $Fe_{55}N_{20}Al_{25}$ films when annealed at 573, 773 and 873 K. At these temperatures, the amount of iron/iron nitride particles increased with increasing annealing time. An increase in the saturation magnetization is explained qualitatively in terms of the amount of such magnetic particles in the film. The resistivity increased monotonously with decreasing Fe content, being consistent with randomly dispersed iron/iron nitride particles in the AlN film. The coercive force was evaluated to be larger than $6.4{\times}10^3Am^{-1}$ (80 Oe). This large value is ascribed to a residual stress restrained in the ferromagnetic particles, which is considered to be related to the present preparation process.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.211-219
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• 2001

This paper describes a read-only CMOS transponder IC for RFID applications. A full-wave rectifier implemented using NMOS transistors supplies the transponder with a dc supply voltage using the magnetic field generated from a reader. A 64-bit ROM has been designed for a data memory. Front-end impedance modulation and Manchester coding are used for transmitting the data from the transponder memory to the reader. A new damping circuit which has almost constant damping rate under the variations of the distance between the transponder and the reader has been employed for impedance modulation. The designed circuit has been fabricated using a 0.65${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$2-poly, 2-metal CMOS process. Die area is 0.9mm$\times$0.4mm. Measurement results show that it has a constant damping rate of around 20~25% and a data transmission rate of 3.9kbps at a 125KHz RF carrier. The power required for reading operation is about 100㎼. The measured reading distance is around 7cm.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.862-867
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• 2009

This paper presents a study on a rectenna for rectification of incident low power microwave signals with power densities less than 2 mW/$cm^2$ at 2.45 GHz. The proposed rectenna is designed and implemented by a rectifier with voltage doubler structure and a printed Yagi antenna which suppress re-radiation of the second order harmonic of fundamental frequency. The printed Yagi antenna has a gain of about 5 dB, and the measured conversion efficiencies of the rectenna are from 32 % to 42 % when its incident power levels are from 0 dBm to 14 dBm. The developed rectenna is expected to be useful in the power transmission system.

• Proceedings of the Korea Association of Crystal Growth Conference
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• 1996.06a
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• pp.422-448
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• 1996

Low-temperature epitaxial growth of Si and SiGe layers of Si is one of the important processes for the fabrication of the high-speed Si-based heterostructure devices such as heterojunction bipolar transistors. Low-temperature growth ensures the abrupt compositional and doping concentration profiles for future novel devices. Especially in SiGe epitaxy, low-temperature growth is a prerequisite for two-dimensional growth mode for the growth of thin, uniform layers. UHV-ECRCVD is a new growth technique for Si and SiGe epilayers and it is possible to grow epilayers at even lower temperatures than conventional CVD's. SiH and GeH and dopant gases are dissociated by an ECR plasma in an ultrahigh vacuum growth chamber. In situ hydrogen plasma cleaning of the Si native oxide before the epitaxial growth is successfully developed in UHV-ECRCVD. Structural quality of the epilayers are examined by reflection high energy electron diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, Nomarski microscope and atomic force microscope. Device-quality Si and SiGe epilayers are successfully grown at temperatures lower than 600℃ after proper optimization of process parameters such as temperature, total pressure, partial pressures of input gases, plasma power, and substrate dc bias. Dopant incorporation and activation for B in Si and SiGe are studied by secondary ion mass spectrometry and spreading resistance profilometry. Silicon p-n homojunction diodes are fabricated from in situ doped Si layers. I-V characteristics of the diodes shows that the ideality factor is 1.2, implying that the low-temperature silicon epilayers grown by UHV-ECRCVD is truly of device-quality.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.208-208
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• 2010

Indium zinc tin oxide (IZTO) thin films were studied as a possible alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO) films for providing low-cost transparent conducting oxide (TCO) for thin film photovoltaic devices. IZTO films were deposited onto glass substrates at room temperature. A dc/rf magnetron co-sputtering system equipped with a ceramic target of the same composition was used to deposit TCO films. Earlier studies showed that the resistivity value of $In_{0.6}Zn_{0.2}Sn_{0.2}O_{1.5}$ (IZTO20) films could be lowered to approximately $6{\times}10^{-4}ohm{\cdot}cm$ without sacrificing optical transparency and still maintaining amorphous structure through the optimization of process variables. The growth rate was kept at about 8 nm/min while the oxygen-to-argon pressure ratio varied from 0% to 7.5%. As-deposited films were always amorphous and showed strong oxygen pressure dependence of electrical resistivity and electron concentration values. Influence of forming gas anneal (FGA) at medium temperatures was also studied and proven effective in improving electrical properties. In this study, the chemical composition of the targets and the films varied around the $In_{0.6}Zn_{0.2}Sn_{0.2}O_{1.5}$ (IZTO20). It was the main objective of this paper to investigate how off-stoichiometry affected TCO characteristics including electrical resistivity and optical transmission. In addition to the composition effect, we have also studied how film properties changed with processing variables. IZTO thin films have shown their potential as a possible alternative to ITO thin films, in such way that they could be adopted in some applications where currently ITO and IZO thin films are being used. Our experimental results are compared to those obtained for commercial ITO thin films from solar cell application view point.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.43 no.4 s.310
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• pp.35-44
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• 2006

The network induced transmission delay deteriorates the performance and stability of the real-time distributed control system on LonWorks over IP (LonWorks/IP) virtual device network (VDN). LonWorks/IP virtual device network is an integrated form of LonWorks device network and IP data network. The time delay in servo control on the LonWorks/IP-based VDN has highly stochastic nature. In the real-time distributed servo applications for predictive maintenance on the factory floor, timely response is essential.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.238-245
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• 2017

Mg-Ni nanoparticles were synthesized by a physical vapor condensation method (DC arc-discharge) in a mixture of argon and hydrogen atmosphere, using compressed mixture of micro powders as the raw materials. The crystal phases, morphology, and microstructures of nanoparticles were analyzed by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). It was found that the intermetallic compounds of $Mg_2Ni$ and $Mg_2Ni$ formed with existence of phases of Mg, Ni, and MgO in Mg-Ni nanoparticles. After one cycle of hydrogen absorption/desorption process (activation treatment), Mg-Ni nanoparticles exhibited excellent hydrogen absorption properties. $Mg_2Ni$ phase became the main phase by aphase transformation during the hydrogen treatments. The phenomenon of refinement of grain size in the nanoparticle was also observed after the hydrogen absorption/desorption processes, which was attributed to the effect of volume expansion/shrinkage and subsequent break of nanoparticles. Maximum hydrogen absorption contents are 1.75, 2.21 and 2.77 wt.% at 523, 573 and 623 K, respectively.