• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.493-493
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• 2014

The manufacturing cost of thin-film photovoltics can potentially be lowered by minimizing the amount of a semiconductor material used to fabricate devices. Thin-film solar cells are typically only a few micrometers thick, whereas crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer solar cells are $180{\sim}300\mu}m$ thick. As such, thin-film layers do not fully absorb incident light and their energy conversion efficiency is lower compared with that of c-Si wafer solar cells. Therefore, effective light trapping is required to realize commercially viable thin-film cells, particularly for indirect-band-gap semiconductors such as c-Si. An emerging method for light trapping in thin film solar cells is the use of metallic nanostructures that support surface plasmons. Plasmon-enhanced light absorption is shown to increase the cell photocurrent in many types of solar cells, specifically, in c-Si thin-film solar cells and in poly-Si thin film solar cell. By proper engineering of these structures, light can be concentrated and coupled into a thin semiconductor layer to increase light absorption. In many cases, silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NP) are formed either on the front surface or on the rear surface on the cells. In case of poly-Si thin film solar cells, Ag NPs are formed on the rear surface of the cells due to longer wavelengths are not perfectly absorbed in the active layer on the first path. In our cells, shorter wavelengths typically 300~500 nm are also not effectively absorbed. For this reason, a new concept of plasmonic nanostructure which is NPs formed both the front - and the rear - surface is worth testing. In this simulation Al NPs were located onto glass because Al has much lower parasitic absorption than other metal NPs. In case of Ag NP, it features parasitic absorption in the optical frequency range. On the other hand, Al NP, which is non-resonant metal NP, is characterized with a higher density of conduction electrons, resulting in highly negative dielectric permittivity. It makes them more suitable for the forward scattering configuration. In addition to this, Ag NP is located on the rear surface of the cell. Ag NPs showed good performance enhancement when they are located on the rear surface of our cells. In this simulation, Al NPs are located on glass and Ag NP is located on the rear Si surface. The structure for the simulation is shown in figure 1. Figure 2 shows FDTD-simulated absorption graphs of the proposed and reference structures. In the simulation, the front of the cell has Al NPs with 70 nm radius and 12.5% coverage; and the rear of the cell has Ag NPs with 157 nm in radius and 41.5% coverage. Such a structure shows better light absorption in 300~550 nm than that of the reference cell without any NPs and the structure with Ag NP on rear only. Therefore, it can be expected that enhanced light absorption of the structure with Al NP on front at 300~550 nm can contribute to the photocurrent enhancement.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.175-182
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• 2008

This study is concerned with the evaluation of the corrosion resistance of coated semiconductor equipment parts with various processes. To select the appropriate basis for evaluation, replacement parts were observed during the semiconductor manufacturing process. This study also ran a dry corrosion test using $Al_2O_3$, which is mostly used as a coating material. This test quantitatively measured the efficiency of coated parts. Surface morphology, leakage current and breakdown voltage were also evaluated. This study showed that a dry corrosion process led to the drop of electrical properties, for example, the leakage current increase and the dielectric strength decrease. The surface morphology test displayed that surface damage is largely dependent on the exposure time to corrosive environments. By using the values that changed during the corrosion process, it may be possible to contrive a method to evaluate the efficiency of coated parts with various processes.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.18 no.2 s.117
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• pp.151-157
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• 2007

We have presented a compact two-wire helical antenna adopted an open stub in opposite to a feeding point, which is for a T-DMB antenna of mobile devices. By adjusting the length of the open stub or pasting a dielectric material on the open stub, the input impedance around 200 MHz, bands of the T-DMB, can be easily control, even though the total height of the antenna is less than 8 cm(0.053 $\lambda$ at 200 MHz). The operating mechanism of the antenna is explained by using equivalent circuits of two modes, an unbalanced mode and a balanced mode. Based on the analysis of the equivalent circuits, the effects of using the open stub are validated. Several proposed antennas have been fabricated and measured. One of the fabricated antennas has -10 dB impedance bandwidth of $196{\sim}204$ MHz(8 MHz) whose value covers one channel of the T-DMB(6 MHz). The measured $S_{21}$ of the antenna is -38.6 dB which is about 17 dB higher than that of a monopole antenna whose height is same with the proposed antenna.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.169-174
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• 2008

The structural and electrical properties of amorphous $BaSm_2Ti_4O_{12}$ (BSmT) films on a $TiN/SiO_2/Si$ substrate deposited using a RF magnetron sputtering method were investigated. The deposition of BSmT films was carried out at $300^{\circ}C$ in a mixed oxygen and argon ($O_2$ : Ar = 1 : 4) atmosphere with a total pressure of 8.0 mTorr. In particular, a 45 nm-thick amorphous BSmT film exhibited a high capacitance density and low dissipation factor of $7.60\;fF/{\mu}m2$ and 1.3%, respectively, with a dielectric constant of 38 at 100 kHz. Its capacitance showed very little change, even in GHz ranges from 1.0 GHz to 6.0 GHz. The quality factor of the BSmT film was as high as 67 at 6 GHz. The leakage current density of the BSmT film was also very low, at approximately $5.11\;nA/cm^2$ at 2 V; its conduction mechanism was explained by the the Poole-Frenkel emission. The quadratic voltage coefficient of capacitance of the BSmT film was approximately $698\;ppm/V^2$, which is higher than the required value (<$100\;ppm/V^2$) for RF application. This could be reduced by improving the process condition. The temperature coefficient of capacitance of the film was low at nearly $296\;ppm/^{\circ}C$ at 100 kHz. Therefore, amorphous BSmT grown on a TiN substrate is a viable candidate material for a metal-insulator-metal capacitor.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.284-284
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• 2016

Topological insulator (TI) is a bulk-insulating material with topologically protected Dirac surface states in the band gap. In particular, $Bi_2Se_3$ attracted great attention as a model three-dimensional TI due to its simple electronic structure of the surface states in a relatively large band gap (~0.3 eV). However, experimental efforts using $Bi_2Se_3$ have been difficult due to the abundance of structural defects, which frequently results in the bulk conduction being dominant over the surface conduction in transport due to the bulk doping effects of the defect sites. One promising approach in avoiding this problem is to reduce the structural defects by heteroepitaxially grow $Bi_2Se_3$ on a substrate with a compatible lattice structure, while also preventing surface degradation by encapsulating the pristine interface between $Bi_2Se_3$ and the substrate in a clean growth environment. A particularly promising choice of substrate for the heteroepitaxial growth is hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which has the same two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) layered structure and hexagonal lattice symmetry as $Bi_2Se_3$. Moreover, since h-BN is a dielectric insulator with a large bandgap energy of 5.97 eV and chemically inert surfaces, it is well suited as a substrate for high mobility electronic transport studies of vdW material systems. Here we report the heteroepitaxial growth and characterization of high quality topological insulator $Bi_2Se_3$ thin films prepared on h-BN layers. Especially, we used molecular beam epitaxy to achieve high quality TI thin films with extremely low defect concentrations and an ideal interface between the films and substrates. To optimize the morphology and microstructural quality of the films, a two-step growth was performed on h-BN layers transferred on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) compatible substrates. The resulting $Bi_2Se_3$ thin films were highly crystalline with atomically smooth terraces over a large area, and the $Bi_2Se_3$ and h-BN exhibited a clear heteroepitaxial relationship with an atomically abrupt and clean interface, as examined by high-resolution TEM. Magnetotransport characterizations revealed that this interface supports a high quality topological surface state devoid of bulk contribution, as evidenced by Hall, Shubnikov-de Haas, and weak anti-localization measurements. We believe that the experimental scheme demonstrated in this talk can serve as a promising method for the preparation of high quality TI thin films as well as many other heterostructures based on 2D vdW layered materials.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.60-68
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• 2015

The study of waste activated sludge (WAS) solubilization has been increased for sludge volume reduction and enhancing the efficiency of anaerobic digestion. Microwave (MW)-assisted solubilization is an effective method for the solubilization of WAS because this method can lead to thermal, nonthermal effect and ionic conduction by dielectric heating. In this study, the solubilization of WAS by MW heating and conductive heating (CH) was compared and to enhance the MW-assisted solubilization of WAS at low MW output power, chemical agents were applied such as $H_2SO_4$ as the strong acid and $CaCl_2$, NaCl as the ionic materials. Compared to the COD solubilization of WAS by CH, that by MW heating was approximately 1.4, 6.2 times higher at $50^{\circ}C$, $100^{\circ}C$, respectively and the highest COD solubilization of WAS was 10.0% in this study of low MW output power condition. At the same MW output power and reaction time in chemically agents assisted experiments, the COD solubilization of WAS were increased up to 18.1% and 12.7% with the addition of $H_2SO_4$ and NaCl, however, that with the addition of $CaCl_2$ was 10.7%. This result might be due to the fact that the precipitation reaction occurred by calcium ion ($Ca^{2+}$) and phosphate ion (${PO_4}^{3-}$) produced in WAS after MW-assisted solubilization. In this study, $H_2SO_4$ turned out to be the optimal agent for the enhancement of MW efficiency, the addition of 0.2 M $H_2SO_4$ was the most effective condition for MW-assisted WAS solubilization.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.83-90
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• 2023

The β-Ga₂O₃ has the most thermodynamically stable phase, a wide band gap of 4.8~4.9 eV and a high dielectric breakdown voltage of 8MV/cm. Due to such excellent electrical characteristics, this material as a power device material has been attracted much attention. Furthermore, the β-Ga₂O₃ has easy liquid phase growth method unlike materials such as SiC and GaN. However, since the grown pure β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal requires the intentionally controlled doping due to a low conductivity to be applied to a power device, the research on doping in β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal is definitely important. In this study, various source powders of un-doped, Sn 0.05 mol%, Sn 0.1 mol%, Sn 1.5 mol%, Sn 2 mol%, Sn 3 mol%-doped Ga₂O₃ were prepared by adding different mole ratios of SnO₂ powder to Ga₂O₃ powder, and β-Ga₂O₃ single crystals were grown by using an edge-defined Film-fed Growth (EFG) method. The crystal direction, crystal quality, optical, and electrical properties of the grown β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal were analyzed according to the Sn dopant content, and the property variation of β-Ga₂O₃ single crystal according to the Sn doping were extensively investigated.