• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.181-184
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• 2003

In this paper, we investigated the position-dependent stress distribution of indium-tin-oxide (ITO) film on Polycarbonate (PC) substrate by external bending force. It was found that there are the maximum crack density at the center position and decreasing crack density as goes to the edge. In accordance with crack distribution, it was observed that the change of electrical resistivity of ITO islands is maximum at the center and decrease as goes to the edge. From the result that crack density is increasing at same island position as face-plate distance (L) decreases, it is evident that the more stress is imposed on same island position as L decreases.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.552-557
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• 2006

Electrical, optical, surface, and structural properties of amorphous indium-zinc-oxide (a-IZO) grown by box cathode sputtering (BCS) were compared with crystalline indium-tin-oxide (c-ITO) anode films grown by conventional DC sputtering (DCS). Although x-ray diffraction plot of BCS-grown IZO film shows amorphous structure, the optical and electrical properties of a-IZO is comparable to those of c-ITO film. In particular, BCS-grown IZO films shows very smooth surface without defects such as pin hole and cracks because most of the energy of the sputtered atoms was confined in high density plasma region in box cathode gun. Furthermore polymer organic light emitting diodes (POLED) with the a-IZO anode film shows better electrical properties than that of POLED with the c-ITO anode film due to high work function and smooth surface of a-IZO. This suggested that BCS-grown a-IZO film is promising anode materials substituting conventional c-ITO anode in OLED and flexible displays.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.47-52
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• 2017

Recently, a great attention has been paid to the mechanical behavior of ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) film, which is widely used in current smart devices due to its excellent electrical properties and transparency. In this study, the reliability of ITO thin films on flexible substrates was investigated using bending test and bending fatigue test. According to the relative position of ITO and substrate, the experiment was conducted on both outer and inner bending conditions. Inner bending condition exhibited superior electrical stability compared to outer bending test. The electrical resistance during outer bending fatigue test significantly increased compared to that in the inner bending fatigue. The crack nucleation and propagation differs according to the stress state and they have a great influence on the electrical resistance. The crack morphologies were observed by scanning electron microscopy.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.32-37
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• 2008

The electrical, optical, structural and surface properties of an indium tin oxide (ITO) film grown on a flexible PET substrate using a specially designed roll-to-roll (R2R) sputtering system as a function of the DC power, $Ar/O_2$ flow ratio, and rolling speed is reported. It was observed that both the electrical and optical properties of the ITO film on the PET substrate were critically dependent on the $Ar/O_2$ flow ratio. In addition, x-ray diffraction examination results showed that the structure of the ITO film on the PET substrate was an amorphous structure regardless of the DC power and the $Ar/O_2$ flow ratio due to a low substrate temperature, which was maintained constant by a main cooling drum. Under optimized conditions, ITO film with resistivity of $6.44{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}-cm$ and transparency of 86% were obtained, even when prepared at room temperature. Furthermore, bending test results exhibited that R2R-grown ITO film had good flexibility which would be applicable to flexible displays and solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.104-108
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• 2012

Flexible organic thin film solar cell device with Bulk Hetero-Junction (BHJ) structure was fabricated with blended conjugated polymer of PCDTBT : $PC_{71}BM$ as active layer. Surface of ITO anode for the organic solar cell device was treated with ozone. The organic solar cell device with bare ITO showed short circuit current density ($J_{sc}$) of $8.2mA/cm^2$, open-circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$) of 0.73V, fill factor (FF) of 0.36, and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 2.16%, respectively. The organic solar cell device with ozone treated ITO anode revealed distinctively improved performance parameters:$J_{sc}$ of $9.8mA/cm^2$, $V_{oc}$ of 0.82V, FF of 0.43, PCE(${\eta}$) of 3.42%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.399-400
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• 2007

In this work, we have investigated the characteristics of the phosphorescent OLED and flexible OLED fabricated on IZTO/glass and IZTO/PET anode film grown by magnetron sputtering, respectively. Electrical and optical characteristics of amorphous IZTO/glass anode exhibited similar to commercial ITO anode even though it was deposited at room temperature. In addition, the amorphous IZTO anode showed higher work function than that of the commercial ITO anode after ozone treatment for 10 minutes. Furthermore, a phosphorescent OLED fabricated on amorphous IZTO anode film showed improved current-voltage-luminance characteristics, external quantum efficiency and power efficiency in contrast with phosphorescent OLED fabricated on commercial ITO anode film. This indicates that IZTO anode is promising alternative anode materials for anode in OLEDs and flexible OLEDs.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.07a
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• pp.1096_1097
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• 2009

Aluminium doped zinc oxide(ZnO:Al) thin film, which is mainly used as a transparent conducting electrode in electronic devices, has many advantages compared with conventional indium tin oxide(ITO). In this paper in order to investigate the possible application of ZnO:Al thin films as a transparent conducting electrode for flexible film-typed dye sensitized solar cell (FT-DSCs), ZnO:Al and ITO thin films were prepared on the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by r. f. magnetron sputtering method. Specially one-inched FT-DSCs using either a ZnO:Al or ITO electrode were also fabricated separately under the same manufacturing conditions. Some properties of both the FT-DSCs with ZnO:Al and ITO transparent electrodes, such as conversion efficiency, fill factor, and photocurrent were measured and compared with each other. The results showed that by doping the ZnO target with 2 wt% of $Al_2O_3$, the film deposited at discharge power of 200W resulted in the minimum resistivity of $2.2\times10^{-3}\Omega/cm$ and at ransmittance of 91.7%, which are comparable with those of commercially available ITO. Two types of FT-DSCs showed nearly the same tendency of I-V characteristics and the same value of conversion efficiencies. Efficiency of FT-DSCs using ZnO:Al electrode was around 2.6% and that of fabricated FT-DSCs using ITO was 2.5%. This means that ZnO:Al thin film can be used in FT-DSCs as a transparent conducting layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.288-289
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• 2011

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is a typical highly Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) currently used as a transparent electrode material. Most widely used deposition method is the sputtering process for ITO film deposition because it has a high deposition rate, allows accurate control of the film thickness and easy deposition process and high electrical/optical properties. However, to apply high quality ITO thin film in a flexible microelectronic device using a plastic substrate, conventional DC magnetron sputtering (DMS) processed ITO thin film is not suitable because it needs a high temperature thermal annealing process to obtain high optical transmittance and low resistivity, while the generally plastic substrates has low glass transition temperatures. In the room temperature sputtering process, the electrical property degradation of ITO thin film is caused by negative oxygen ions effect. This high energy negative oxygen ions(about over 100eV) can be critical physical bombardment damages against the formation of the ITO thin film, and this damage does not recover in the room temperature process that does not offer thermal annealing. Hence new ITO deposition process that can provide the high electrical/optical properties of the ITO film at room temperature is needed. To solve these limitations we develop the Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) system. The MFSS is based on DMS and it has the plasma limiter, which compose the permanent magnet array (Fig.1). During the ITO thin film deposition in the MFSS process, the electrons in the plasma are trapped by the magnetic field at the plasma limiters. The plasma limiter, which has a negative potential in the MFSS process, prevents to the damage by negative oxygen ions bombardment, and increases the heat(-) up effect by the Ar ions in the bulk plasma. Fig. 2. shows the electrical properties of the MFSS ITO thin film and DMS ITO thin film at room temperature. With the increase of the sputtering pressure, the resistivity of DMS ITO increases. On the other hand, the resistivity of the MFSS ITO slightly increases and becomes lower than that of the DMS ITO at all sputtering pressures. The lowest resistivity of the DMS ITO is $1.0{\times}10-3{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ and that of the MFSS ITO is $4.5{\times}10-4{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. This resistivity difference is caused by the carrier mobility. The carrier mobility of the MFSS ITO is 40 $cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, which is significantly higher than that of the DMS ITO (10 $cm^2/V{\cdot}s$). The low resistivity and high carrier mobility of the MFSS ITO are due to the magnetic field shielded effect. In addition, although not shown in this paper, the roughness of the MFSS ITO thin film is lower than that of the DMS ITO thin film, and TEM, XRD and XPS analysis of the MFSS ITO show the nano-crystalline structure. As a result, the MFSS process can effectively prevent to the high energy negative oxygen ions bombardment and supply activation energies by accelerating Ar ions in the plasma; therefore, high quality ITO can be deposited at room temperature.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.39-44
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• 2011

In this study, we have investigated the structural and electrical characteristics of IZO thin films deposited on flexible substrate for the OLED (organic light emitting diodes) devices. For this purpose, PES was used for flexible substrate and IZO thin films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering under oxygen ambient gases (Ar, $Ar+O_2$) at room temperature. In order to investigate the influences of the oxygen, the flow rate of oxygen in argon mixing gas has been changed from 0.1sccm to 0.5sccm. All the samples show amorphous structure regardless of flow rate. The electrical resistivity of IZO films increased with increasing flow rate of $O_2$ under $Ar+O_2$. All the films showed the average transmittance over 85% in the visible range. The OLED device was fabricated with different IZO electrodes made by configuration of IZO/a-NPD/DPVB/$Alq_3$/LiF/Al to elucidate the performance of IZO substrate. OLED devices with the amorphous-IZO (a-IZO) anode film show better current density-voltage-luminance characteristics than that of OLED devices with the commercial crystalline-ITO (c-ITO) anode film. It can be explained that very flat surface roughness and high work function of a-IZO anode film lead to more efficient hole injection by reduction of interface barrier height between anode and organic layers. This suggests that a-IZO film is a promising anode materials substituting conventional c-ITO anode in OLED devices.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.10-14
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• 2003

Flexible displays such as plastic-based liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and organic light-emitting diode displays (OLEDDs) have been researched and developed at KETI since 1997. The plastic film substrate is very weak to heat and pressure compared to glass substrate, that its fabrication process is limited to 110$^{\circ}C$ and low pressure. The ITO films were deposited on the bare plastic film substrate by rf-magnetron sputtering. Moreover, in order to maintain uniform cell gap and pressure on the plastic film substrate, we utilized newly-invented jig and fabrication process. Electro-optical characteristics were better than or equivalent to those of typical glass LCDs though it is thinner, lighter-weight, and more robust than glass LCDs.