• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.38 no.11
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• pp.973-979
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• 2001

Tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) thin films were deposited using r.f. magnetron reactive sputtering and the electrical properties, such as the resistivity, carrier concentration and mobility, were investigated as a function of the sample position under a given magnetron sputtering condition. The nonhomogeneity of the electrical properties with the sample position was observed under a given magnetron sputtering condition. The resistivity of ITO thin film on the substrate which corresponded to the center of the target had a minimum value, 2∼4$\times$10$\^$-4/$\Omega$$.$cm, and it increased symmetrically when the substrate deviated from the center. The density measurement result also showed that ITO thin film deposited at the center has a maximum density of 7.0g/cm$^3$, which was a relative density of about 97%, and the density decreased symmetrically as the substrate deviated from the center. The nonhomogeneity of electrical properties with the deposition position could be explained with the incidence angle of the source beam alpha, which is related with an atomic self-shadowing effect. It was confirmed experimentally that the density in film affect both the carrier mobility and the conductivity. In the case where the density of ITO thin film is 7.0g/cm$^3$, the magnitude of the mean free path was identical with that of the grain size(the diameter of column). However, in the other cases, the mean free path was smaller than the grain size. These results showed that the scattering of the free electrons at the grain boundary is the major factor for the electrical conduction in ITO thin films having a high density, and there exists other scattering sources such as vacancies, holes, or pores in ITO thin films having a low density.ing a low density.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.116-125
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• 2018

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is a commonly used material for the front contact layer of chalcopyrite $CuInGaSe_2$ (CIGS) based thin film solar cells since it satisfies the requisite optical and electrical properties with low cost and abundant elemental availability. Low-resistivity and high-transmission front contacts have been developed for high-performance CIGS solar cells, and nearly meet the required performance. However, the durability of the cell especially for the corrosion resistance of AZO films has not been studied intensively. In this work, AZO films were prepared on Corning glass 7059 substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering depending on the hydrogen content. The electrical and optical properties and electrochemical corrosion resistance of the AZO films were evaluated as a function of the hydrogen content. With increasing hydrogen content to 6 wt%, the crystallinity, crystal size, and surface roughness of the films increased, and the resistivity decreased with increased carrier concentration, Hall mobility, oxygen vacancies, and $Zn(OH)_2$ binding on the AZO surface. At a hydrogen content of 6 wt%, the corrosion resistance was also relatively high with less columnar morphology, shallow pore channels, and lower grain boundary angles.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.53-53
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• 2011

As the dimension of Cu interconnects has continued to reduce, its resistivity is expected to increase at the nanoscale due to increased surface and grain boundary scattering of electrons. To suppress increase of the resistivity in nanoscale interconnects, alloying Cu with other metal elements such as Al, Mn, and Ag is being considered to increase the mean free path of the drifting electrons. The formation of Al alloy with a slight amount of Cu broadly studied in the past. The study of Cu alloy including a very small Al fraction, by contrast, recently began. The formation of Cu-Al alloy is limited in wet chemical bath and was mainly conducted for fundamental studies by sputtering or evaporation system. However, these deposition methods have a limitation in production environment due to poor step coverage in nanoscale Cu metallization. In this work, gap-filling of Cu-Al alloy was conducted by cyclic MOCVD (metal organic chemical vapor deposition), followed by thermal annealing for alloying, which prevented an unwanted chemical reaction between Cu and Al precursors. To achieve filling the Cu-Al alloy into sub-100nm trench without overhang and void formation, furthermore, hydrogen plasma pretreatment of the trench pattern with Ru barrier layer was conducted in order to suppress of Cu nucleation and growth near the entrance area of the nano-scale trench by minimizing adsorption of metal precursors. As a result, superconformal gap-fill of Cu-Al alloy could be achieved successfully in the high aspect ration nanoscale trenches. Examined morphology, microstructure, chemical composition, and electrical properties of superfilled Cu-Al alloy will be discussed in detail.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.313-319
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• 2018

This study introduces a new investigation report on the microstructural and electrical property changes of $ZnO-Zn_2BiVO_6-Mn_3O_4$ (ZZMn), where 0.33 mol% of $Mn_3O_4$ and 0.5 mol% of $Zn_2BiVO_6$ were added to ZnO (99.17 mol%) as liquid phase sintering aids. $Zn_2BiVO_6$ contributes to the decrease of sintering temperatures by up to $800^{\circ}C$, and segregates its particles at the grain boundary, while $Mn_3O_4$ enhances ${\alpha}$, the nonlinear coefficient, of varistor properties up to ${\alpha}=62$. In comparison, when the sintering temperature is increased from $800^{\circ}C$ to $1,000^{\circ}C$, the resistivity of ZnO grains decreases from $0.34{\Omega}cm$ to $0.16{\Omega}cm$, and the varistor property degrades. Oxygen vacancy ($V_o^{\bullet}$) (P1, 0.33~0.36 eV) is formed as a dominant defect. Two different kinds of grain boundary activation energies of P2 (0.51~0.70 eV) and P3 (0.70~0.93 eV) are formed according to different sintering temperatures, which are tentatively attributed to be $ZnO/Zn_2BiVO_6$-rich interface and ZnO/ZnO interface, respectively. Accordingly, this study introduces a progressive method of manufacturing ZnO chip varistors by way of sintering ZZMn-based varistor under $900^{\circ}C$. However, to procure a higher reliability, an in-depth study on the multi-component varistors with double-layer grain boundaries should be executed.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.403-410
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• 2001

Acceleration in integration density and speed performance of ULSI circuits require miniaturization of CMOS and interconnections as well as higher current density capabilities for transistors. A leading candidate to substitute Al-alloy is Cu, which has lower resistivity and higher melting point. So we can expect much higher electromigration resistance. In this paper, we are going to explain the major features of EM for MOCVD Cu according to variant conditions. We compared the life time and activation energy of MOCVD Cu with those of I-beam Cu and AA in the same conditions. The electromigration experiments were performed with Cu/Al/TiN multilayer. Experimental results shows that the deposition rate and electromigration characteristics of Cu thin film were improved by the Al interlayer.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.228-232
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• 2003

The effects of$ Nd_2$$O_3$addition on the properties of Mn-Zn ferrite were investigated in the doping concentration range from 0.05 to 0.25 wt%. All samples were prepared by standard fabrication of ferrite ceramics. With increasing the Neodymium oxides, specific density and initial permeability increased on the whole. But, the tendencies such as upper result had the measured value on limitation and characteristics saturated or decreased properties after that. With increasing the content of Neodymium oxides. both the real and imaginary component of complex permeability and the magnetic loss(tan$\delta$) increased. Because reason that magnetic loss increases is high ratio that a real department increases than imaginary department. Magnetic loss increased none the less for increasing the real department related with magnetic permeability. But, the magnetic loss of ferrite doped with the Neodymium oxides were lower than that of none doped Mn-Zn ferrite. The small amount of percent Neodymium oxides in Mn-Zn ferrite composition led to enhancement of resistivity in bulk, and more so in the grain boundary.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.371-372
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• 2012

We have studied lead-based gapless semiconductors, $PbPdO_2$, which is very sensitive to external parameters such as temperature, pressure, electric field, etc[1]. We have fabricated pure $PbPdO_2$, Co- and Mn-doped $PbPdO_2$ thin films using the pulsed laser deposition. Because of the volatile element of Pb, it is very difficult to grow the films. Note that in case of $MgB_2$, Mg is also volatile element. So in order to enhance the quality of $MgB_2$, some experiments are carried out in annealing with Mg-rich atmosphere [2]. This annealing process with volatile element plays an important role in making smooth surface. Thus, we applied such process to our studies of $PbPdO_2$ thin films. As a result, we found the optimal condition of ex-situ annealing temperature ${\sim}650^{\circ}C$ and time ~12 hrs. The ex-situ annealing brought the extreme change of surface morphology of thin films. After ex-situ annealing with PbO-rich atmosphere, the grain size of thin film was almost 100 times enlarged for all the thin films and also the PbO impurity phase was smeared out. And from X-ray diffraction measurements, we determined highly crystallized phases after annealing. So, we measured electrical and magnetic properties. Because of reduced grain boundary, the resistivity of ex-situ annealed samples changed smaller than no ex-situ sample. And the carrier densities of thin films were decreased with ex-situ annealing time. In this case, oxygen vacancies were removed by ex-situ annealing. Furthermore, we will discuss the transport and magnetic properties in pure $PbPdO_2$, Co- and Mn-doped $PbPdO_2$ thin films in detail.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.137-141
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• 2010

The $(1-x)La_{0.7}Sr_{0.3}MnO_3(LSMO)/xZnFe_2O_4$(ZFO) (x = 0, 0.01, 0.03, 0.06 and 0.09) composites were prepared by a conventional solid-state reaction method. We investigated the structural properties, magnetic properties and electrical transport properties of (1-x)LSMO/xZFO composites using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), field-cooled dc magnetization and magnetoresistance (MR) measurements. The XRD and SEM results indicate that LSMO and ZFO coexist in the composites and the ZFO mostly segregates at the grain boundaries of LSMO, which agreed well with the results of the magnetic measurements. The resistivity of the samples increased by the increase of the ZFO doping level. A clear metal-to-insulator (M-I) transition was observed at 360K in pure LSMO. The introduction of ZFO further downshifted the transition temperature (350K-160K) while the transition disappeared in the sample (x = 0.09) and it presented insulating/semiconducting behavior in the measured temperature range (100K to 400K). The MR was measured in the presence of the 10kOe field. Compared with pure LSMO, the enhancement of low-field magnetoresistance (LFMR) was observed in the composites. It was clearly observed that the magnetoresistance effect of x = 0.03 was enhanced at room temperature range. These phenomena can be explained using the double-exchange (DE) mechanism, the grain boundary effect and the intrinsic transport properties together.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.15-21
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• 2019

We investigated the structural, electrical and optical properties of zinc oxide (ZnO) ultra-thin films grown at $150^{\circ}C$ by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Diethylzinc and deionized water were used as metal precursors and reactants, respectively, for the deposition of ZnO thin films. The growth rate per ALD cycle was a constant 0.21 nm/cycle at $150^{\circ}C$, and samples below 50 cycles had amorphous properties due to the relatively thin thickness at the initial ALD growth stage. With the increase of the thickness from 100 cycles to 200 cycles, the crystallinity of ZnO thin films was increased and hexagonal wurtzite structure was observed. In addition, the particle size of the ZnO thin film increased with increasing number of ALD cycles. Electrical properties analysis showed that the resistivity value decreased with the increase of the thin film thickness, which is correlated with the decrease of the grain boundary concentration in the thicker ZnO thin film due to the increase of grain size and the improvement of the crystallinity. Optical characterization results showed that the band edge absorption in the near ultraviolet region (300 nm~400 nm) was increased and shifted. This phenomenon is due to the increase of the carrier concentration with the increase of the ZnO thin film thickness. This result agrees well with the decrease of the resistivity with the increase of the thin film thickness. Consequently, as the thickness of the thin film increases, the stress on the film surface is relaxed, the band gap decreases, and the crystallinity and conductivity are improved.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.440-446
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• 2016

This study introduces the characteristics of current-voltage (I-V) and impedance variance for $ZnO-Zn_2BiVO_6-Co_3O_4$ (ZZCo), which is sintered at $900^{\circ}C$, according to temperature changes. ZZCo varistor demonstrates dramatic improvement of non-linear coefficient, ${\alpha}=66$, with lower leakage current and higher insulating resistivity than those of ZZ ($ZnO-Zn_2BiVO_6$) from the aspect of I-V curves. While both systems are thermally stable up to $125^{\circ}C$, ZZCo represents a higher grain boundary activation energy with 1.05 eV and 0.94 eV of J-E-T and from IS & MS, respectively, than that of ZZ with 0.73 eV and 0.82 eV of J-E-T and from IS & MS, respectively, in the region above $180^{\circ}C$. It could be attributed to the formation of $V^*_o$(0.41~0.47 eV) as dominant defect in two systems, as well as the defect-induced capacitance increase from 781 pF to 1 nF in accordance with increasing temperature. On the other hand, both the grain boundary capacitances of ZZ and ZZCo are shown to decrease to 357 pF and 349 pF, respectively, while the resistances systems decreased exponentially, in accordance with increasing temperature. So, this paper suggests that the application of newly formed liquid phases as sintering additives in both $Zn_2BiVO_6$ and the ZZCo-based varistors would be helpful in developing commercialized devices such as chips, disk-type ZnO varistors in the future.