• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.100-101
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• 2012

The plasma damage free and room temperature processedthin film deposition technology is essential for realization of various next generation organic microelectronic devices such as flexible AMOLED display, flexible OLED lighting, and organic photovoltaic cells because characteristics of fragile organic materials in the plasma process and low glass transition temperatures (Tg) of polymer substrate. In case of directly deposition of metal oxide thin films (including transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and amorphous oxide semiconductor (AOS)) on the organic layers, plasma damages against to the organic materials is fatal. This damage is believed to be originated mainly from high energy energetic particles during the sputtering process such as negative oxygen ions, reflected neutrals by reflection of plasma background gas at the target surface, sputtered atoms, bulk plasma ions, and secondary electrons. To solve this problem, we developed the NBAS (Neutral Beam Assisted Sputtering) process as a plasma damage free and room temperature processed sputtering technology. As a result, electro-optical properties of NBAS processed ITO thin film showed resistivity of $4.0{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}m$ and high transmittance (>90% at 550 nm) with nano- crystalline structure at room temperature process. Furthermore, in the experiment result of directly deposition of TCO top anode on the inverted structure OLED cell, it is verified that NBAS TCO deposition process does not damages to the underlying organic layers. In case of deposition of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) thin film on the plastic polymer substrate, the room temperature processed sputtering coating of high quality TCO thin film is required. During the sputtering process with higher density plasma, the energetic particles contribute self supplying of activation & crystallization energy without any additional heating and post-annealing and forminga high quality TCO thin film. However, negative oxygen ions which generated from sputteringtarget surface by electron attachment are accelerated to high energy by induced cathode self-bias. Thus the high energy negative oxygen ions can lead to critical physical bombardment damages to forming oxide thin film and this effect does not recover in room temperature process without post thermal annealing. To salve the inherent limitation of plasma sputtering, we have been developed the Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process as the high quality oxide thin film deposition process at room temperature. The MFSS process is effectively eliminate or suppress the negative oxygen ions bombardment damage by the plasma limiter which composed permanent magnet array. As a result, electro-optical properties of MFSS processed ITO thin film (resistivity $3.9{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$, transmittance 95% at 550 nm) have approachedthose of a high temperature DC magnetron sputtering (DMS) ITO thin film were. Also, AOS (a-IGZO) TFTs fabricated by MFSS process without higher temperature post annealing showed very comparable electrical performance with those by DMS process with $400^{\circ}C$ post annealing. They are important to note that the bombardment of a negative oxygen ion which is accelerated by dc self-bias during rf sputtering could degrade the electrical performance of ITO electrodes and a-IGZO TFTs. Finally, we found that reduction of damage from the high energy negative oxygen ions bombardment drives improvement of crystalline structure in the ITO thin film and suppression of the sub-gab states in a-IGZO semiconductor thin film. For realization of organic flexible electronic devices based on plastic substrates, gas barrier coatings are required to prevent the permeation of water and oxygen because organic materials are highly susceptible to water and oxygen. In particular, high efficiency flexible AMOLEDs needs an extremely low water vapor transition rate (WVTR) of $1{\times}10^{-6}gm^{-2}day^{-1}$. The key factor in high quality inorganic gas barrier formation for achieving the very low WVTR required (under ${\sim}10^{-6}gm^{-2}day^{-1}$) is the suppression of nano-sized defect sites and gas diffusion pathways among the grain boundaries. For formation of high quality single inorganic gas barrier layer, we developed high density nano-structured Al2O3 single gas barrier layer usinga NBAS process. The NBAS process can continuously change crystalline structures from an amorphous phase to a nano- crystalline phase with various grain sizes in a single inorganic thin film. As a result, the water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) of the NBAS processed $Al_2O_3$ gas barrier film have improved order of magnitude compared with that of conventional $Al_2O_3$ layers made by the RF magnetron sputteringprocess under the same sputtering conditions; the WVTR of the NBAS processed $Al_2O_3$ gas barrier film was about $5{\times}10^{-6}g/m^2/day$ by just single layer.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.321-327
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• 2014

Polymer dispersed liquid crystal lenses of the cell gap of $11{\mu}m$ and $30{\mu}m$ were made from a uniformly dispersed mixture of 40 wt% NOA65 prepolymer - 60 wt% E7 liquid crystal with the variations of the additional photoinitiator. The photoinitiator, benzophenone of 5.0 wt% was originally in the commercial prepolymer NOA65. In this works, the influence of the benzophenone amount intentionally added in the commercial NOA65 on the electrical properties of polymer dispersed liquid crystal lens for smart electronic glasses. The additional quantities of the photoinitiator were 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 wt% of the weight of NOA65 - E7 mixture. All the electro-optical properties of the sample with added benzophenone such as the driving voltage, the slope of the linear region, the response time and contrast ratio were more improved than that of commercial NOA65 only. These improvements were due to the increase of the average size of E7 liquid crystal droplets in the samples with the increase of the added benzophenon amount. The liquid crystal droplet size was increased from $5.3{\mu}m$ to $12.2{\mu}m$ when the photoinitiator was added from 0 wt% to 8 wt%. At the same concentration range of the photoinitiator, the driving voltage was ranged from 11.1 V to 17.3 V. The slopes of the linear region were in the range of 10.35~13.96 %T/V, which were more enhanced than that of NOA65 without the additional benzophenone. In particular, though the deteriorations by cell gap of $11{\mu}m$ were so effective to offset the influence of the added benzophenone for both rising and falling response time, it is confirmed that there were still somewhat improvement by the additional benzophenone. Response time and contrast ratios of all the samples with excess benzophenone were slightly enhanced.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.99-104
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• 2011

A stoichiometric mixture of evaporating materials for $MgGa_2Se_4$ single crystal thin films was prepared from horizontal electric furnace. The crystal structure of these compounds has a rhombohedral structure with lattice constants $a_0=3.953\;{\AA}$, $c_0=38.890\;{\AA}$. To obtain the single crystal thin films, $MgGa_2Se_4$ mixed crystal was deposited on thoroughly etched semi-insulating GaAs(100) substrate by the Hot Wall Epitaxy (HWE) system. The source and substrate temperatures were $610^{\circ}C$ and $400^{\circ}C$, respectively. The crystalline structure of the single crystal thin films was investigated by the double crystal X-ray rocking curve and X-ray diffraction ${\omega}-2{\theta}$ scans. The carrier density and mobility of $MgGa_2Se_4$ single crystal thin films measured from Hall effect by van der Pauw method were $6.21{\times}10^{18}\;cm^{-3}$ and 248 $cm^2/v{\cdot}s$ at 293 K, respectively. The optical absorption of $MgGa_2Se_4$ single crystal thin films was investigated in the temperature range from 10 K to 293 K. The temperature dependence of the optical energy gap of the $MgGa_2Se_4$ obtained from the absorption spectra was well described by the Varshni's equation, $E_g(T)=E_g(0)-({\alpha}T^2/T+{\beta})$. The constants of Varshni's equation had the values of $E_g(0)=2.34\;eV$, ${\alpha}=8.81{\times}10^{-4}\;eV/K$ and ${\beta}=251\;K$, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.320-320
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• 2016

Nanocrystalline Carbon thin films have numerous applications in different areas such as mechanical, biotechnology and optoelectronic devices due to attractive properties like high excellent hardness, low friction coefficient, good chemical inertness, low surface roughness, non-toxic and biocompatibility. In this work, we studied the comparison of pure DC power and pulsed DC power in plasma sputtering process of carbon thin films synthesis. Using a close field unbalanced magnetron sputtering system, films were deposited on glass and Si wafer substrates by varying the power density and pulsed DC frequency variations. The plasma characteristics has been studied using the I-V discharge characteristics and optical emission spectroscopy. The films properties were studied using Raman spectroscopy, Hall effect measurement, contact angle measurement. Through the Raman results, ID/IG ratio was found to be increased by increasing either of DC power density and pulsed DC frequency. Film deposition rate, measured by Alpha step measurement, increased with increasing DC power density and decreased with pulsed DC frequency. The electrical resistivity results show that the resistivity increased with increasing DC power density and pulsed DC frequency. The film surface energy was estimated using the calculated values of contact angle of DI water and di-iodo-methane. Our results exhibit a tailoring of surface energies from 52.69 to $55.42mJ/m^2$ by controlling the plasma parameters.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.255-262
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• 2011

This paper has relatively high technical standard and experimental skill. The fabrication of TCO film with high transparency, low resistance and low chromaticity require exact control of several competing factors. This paper has resolved these problems reasonably well, thus recommended for publication. Indium tin oxide(ITO) thin films were by D.C. magnetron roll-to-roll sputter system utilizing ITO and $SiO_2$ targets of ITO and $SiO_2$. In this experiment, the effect of D.C. power, winding speed, and oxygen flow rate on electrical and optical properties of ITO thin films were investigated from the view point of sheet resistance, transmittance, and chromaticity($b^*$). The deposition of $SiO_2$ was performed with RF power of 400W, Ar gas of 50 sccm and the deposition of ITO, DC power of 600W, Ar gas of 50 sccm, $O^2$ gas of 0.2 sccm, and winding speed of 0.56m/min. High quality ITO thin films without $SiO_2$ layer had chromaticity of 2.87, sheet resistivity of 400 ohm/square, and transmittance of 88% and $SiO_2$-doped ITO Thin film with chromaticity of 2.01, sheet resistivity of 709 ohm/square, and transmittance of more than 90% were obtained. As a result, $SiO_2$ was coated on PET before deposition of ITO, their chromaticity($b^*$) and transmittance were better than previous results of ITO films. These results show that coating of $SiO_2$ induced arising chromaticity($b^*$) and transmittance. If the thickness of $SiO_2$ is controlled, sheet resistance value of ITO film will be expected to be better for touch screen. A four point probe and spectrophotometer are used to investigate the properties of ITO thin films.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.175-180
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• 2010

Transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films are widely used for optoelectronic applications. Among TCO materials, zinc oxide (ZnO) has been studied extensively for its high optical transmission and electrical conduction. In this study, the effects of $O_2$ plasma pretreatment on the properties of Ga-doped ZnO films (GZO) on polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrate were studied. The $O_2$ plasma pretreatment process was used instead of conventional oxide buffer layers. The $O_2$ plasma treatment process has several merits compared with the oxide buffer layer treatment, especially on a mass production scale. In this process, an additional sputtering system for oxide composition is not needed and the plasma treatment process is easily adopted as an in-line process. GZO films were fabricated by RF magnetron sputtering process. To improve surface energy and adhesion between the PEN substrate and the GZO film, the $O_2$ plasma pre-treatment process was used prior to GZO sputtering. As the RF power and the treatment time increased, the contact angle decreased and the RMS surface roughness increased significantly. It is believed that the surface energy and adhesive force of the polymer surfaces increased with the $O_2$ plasma treatment and that the crystallinity and grain size of the GZO films increased. When the RF power was 100W and the treatment time was 120 sec in the $O_2$ plasma pretreatment process, the resistivity of the GZO films on the PEN substrate was $1.05\;{\times}\;10^{-3}{\Omega}-cm$, which is an appropriate range for most optoelectronic applications.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.642-642
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• 2013

Graphene, two dimensional single layer of carbon atoms, has tremendous attention due to its superior property such as high electron mobility, high thermal conductivity and optical transparency. Especially, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) grown graphene has been used as a promising material for high quality and large-scale graphene film. Unfortunately, although CVD-grown graphene has strong advantages, application of the CVD-grown graphene is limited due to ineffective transfer process that delivers the graphene onto a desired substrate by using polymer support layer such as PMMA(polymethyl methacrylate). The transferred CVD-grown graphene has serious drawback due to remaining polymeric residues generated during transfer process, which induces the poor physical and electrical characteristics by a p-doping effect and impurity scattering. To solve such issue incurred during polymer transfer process of CVD-grown graphene, various approaches including thermal annealing, chemical cleaning, mechanical cleaning have been tried but were not successful in getting rid of polymeric residues. On the other hand, lithographical patterning of graphene is an essential step in any form of microelectronic processing and most of conventional lithographic techniques employ photoresist for the definition of graphene patterns on substrates. But, application of photoresist is undesirable because of the presence of residual polymers that contaminate the graphene surface consistent with the effects generated during transfer process. Therefore, in order to fully utilize the excellent properties of CVD-grown graphene, new approach of transfer and patterning techniques which can avoid polymeric residue problem needs to be developed. In this work, we carried out transfer and patterning process simultaneously with no polymeric residue by using a metal etch mask. The patterned thin gold layer was deposited on CVD-grown graphene instead of photoresists in order to make much cleaner and smoother surface and then transferred onto a desired substrate with PMMA, which does not directly contact with graphene surface. We compare the surface properties and patterning morphology of graphene by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy(AFM) and Raman spectroscopy. Comparison with the effect of residual polymer and metal on performance of graphene FET will be discussed.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.993-994
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• 2008

Electrochromic (EC) devices are capable of reversibly changing their optical properties upon charge injection and extraction induced by the external voltage. The characteristics of the EC device, such as low power consumption, high coloration efficiency, and memory effects under open circuit status, make them suitable for use in a variety of applications including smart windows and electronic papers. Coloration due to reduction or oxidation of redox chromophores can be used for EC devices (e-paper), but the switching time is slow (second level). Recently, with increasing demand for the low cost, lightweight flat panel display with paper-like readability (electronic paper), an EC display technology based on dye-modified $TiO_2$ nanoparticle electrode was developed. A well known organic dye molecule, viologen, was adsorbed on the surface of a mesoporous $TiO_2$ nanoparticle film to form the EC electrode. On the other hand, ZnO is a wide bandgap II-VI semiconductor which has been applied in many fields such as UV lasers, field effect transistors and transparent conductors. The bandgap of the bulk ZnO is about 3.37 eV, which is close to that of the $TiO_2$ (3.4 eV). As a traditional transparent conductor, ZnO has excellent electron transport properties, even in ZnO nanoparticle films. In the past few years, one-dimension (1D) nanostructures of ZnO have attracted extensive research interest. In particular, 1D ZnO nanowires renders much better electron transportation capability by providing a direct conduction path for electron transport and greatly reducing the number of grain boundaries. These unique advantages make ZnO nanowires a promising matrix electrode for EC dye molecule loading. ZnO nanowires grow vertically from the substrate and form a dense array (Fig. 1). The ZnO nanowires show regular hexagonal cross section and the average diameter of the ZnO nanowires is about 100 nm. The cross-section image of the ZnO nanowires array (Fig. 1) indicates that the length of the ZnO nanowires is about $6\;{\mu}m$. From one on/off cycle of the ZnO EC cell (Fig. 2). We can see that, the switching time of a ZnO nanowire electrode EC cell with an active area of $1\;{\times}\;1\;cm^2$ is 170 ms and 142 ms for coloration and bleaching, respectively. The coloration and bleaching time is faster compared to the $TiO_2$ mesoporous EC devices with both coloration and bleaching time of about 250 ms for a device with an active area of $2.5\;cm^2$. With further optimization, it is possible that the response time can reach ten(s) of millisecond, i.e. capable of displaying video. Fig. 3 shows a prototype with two different transmittance states. It can be seen that good contrast was obtained. The retention was at least a few hours for these prototypes. Being an oxide, ZnO is oxidation resistant, i.e. it is more durable for field emission cathode. ZnO nanotetropods were also applied to realize the first prototype triode field emission device, making use of scattered surface-conduction electrons for field emission (Fig. 4). The device has a high efficiency (field emitted electron to total electron ratio) of about 60%. With this high efficiency, we were able to fabricate some prototype displays (Fig. 5 showing some alphanumerical symbols). ZnO tetrapods have four legs, which guarantees that there is one leg always pointing upward, even using screen printing method to fabricate the cathode.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.305-311
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• 2001

$PbO-B_2O_3-SiO_2-Al_2O_3$, system was investigated for optical, thermal and electrical properties of transparent dielectric. We also studied the reaction between transparent dielectric and transparent electrode(Indium Tin Oxide, ITO) during firing. For the evaluation of properties, dielectrics were prepared under the conditions fired at 520~58$0^{\circ}C$ with 12$\mu\textrm{m}$ thickness. In the reaction between dielectrics and electrode(ITO), In ions diffused into dielectric layer, while Sn ion diffusion was not observed. The coefficient of thermal expansion, the dielectric constant, the glass transition temperature and the transmittance of the dielectric were greatly dependent on PbO content. The increase of the coefficient of thermal expansion and the dielectric constant were monitored by increasing PbO, while the glass transition temperature and the transmittance were decreased. With the increased $Al_2O_3/B_2O_3$ ratio, the coefficient of thermal expansion and the transmittance were decreased, while the dielectric constant was increased. The glass transition temperature did not change significantly.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.97-97
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• 2013

Recently, Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (CZTSS), which is one of the In- and Ga- free absorber materials, has been attracted considerable attention as a new candidate for use as an absorber material in thin film solar cells. The CZTSS-based absorber material has outstanding characteristics such as band gap energy of 1.0 eV to 1.5 eV, high absorption coefficient on the order of 104 cm-1, and high theoretical conversion efficiency of 32.2% in thin film solar cells. Despite these promising characteristics, research into CZTSS based thin film solar cells is still incomprehensive and related reports are quite few compared to those for CIGS thin film solar cells, which show high efficiency of over 20%. I will briefly overview the recent technological development of CZTSS thin film solar cells and then introduce our research results mainly related to sputter based process. CZTSS thin film solar cells are prepared by sulfurization of stacked both metallic and sulfide precursors. Sulfurization process was performed in both furnace annealing system and rapid thermal processing system using S powder as well as 5% diluted H2S gas source at various annealing temperatures ranging from $520^{\circ}C$ to $580^{\circ}C$. Structural, optical, microstructural, and electrical properties of absorber layers were characterized using XRD, SEM, TEM, UV-Vis spectroscopy, Hall-measurement, TRPL, etc. The effects of processing parameters, such as composition ratio, sulfurization pressure, and sulfurization temperature on the properties of CZTSS absorber layers will be discussed in detail. CZTSS thin film solar cell fabricated using metallic precursors shows maximum cell efficiency of 6.9% with Jsc of 25.2 mA/cm2, Voc of 469 mV, and fill factor of 59.1% and CZTS thin film solar cell using sulfide precursors shows that of 4.5% with Jsc of 19.8 mA/cm2, Voc of 492 mV, and fill factor of 46.2%. In addition, other research activities in our lab related to the formation of CZTS absorber layers using solution based processes such as electro-deposition, chemical solution deposition, nano-particle formation will be introduced briefly.