• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.353-357
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• 2010

Recently, silicon etching have received much attention for display industry, nano imprint technology, silicon photonics, and MEMS application. After the etching process, removing of etch mask and residue of sidewall is very important. The investigation of the etched mask removing was carried out by using the ashing, HF dipping and acid cleaning process. Experiment shows that oxygen component of reactive gas and photoresist react with silicon and converting them into the mask fence. It is very difficult to remove by using ashing or acid cleaning process because mask fence consisted of Si and O compounds. However, dilute HF dipping is very effective process for SiOx layer removing. Finally, we found optimized condition for etched mask removing.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.1078-1084
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• 2006

Impurity contamination induced by $CF_4\;and\;HBr/Cl_2/O_2$ plasma etching on Si surface was examined by using surface spectroscopes. XPS(x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) surface analysis showed that F of 0.4 at % exists in the surface layer in the form of Si-F bonding but Br and Cl are below the detection limit $(0.1{\sim}1.0%)$ of the spectroscope. Static-SIMS(secondary ion mass spectrometry) surface analysis showed that the etched Si surface was contaminated with etching gas elements such as H, F, Cl and Br, and they existed to the depth of about $20{\sim}40nm$. The etched Si surface was treated with three different methods that were HF dip, thermal oxidation followed by HF dip and oxygen-plasma oxidation followed by HF dip. They showed an effect in reducing the impurity contamination and the oxygen-plasma oxidation followed by HF dipping method appears to be a little bit more effective.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.319.1-319.1
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• 2016

Recently, the Al-doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) films are intensively used in thin film a-Si solar cell applications due to their high transmittance and good conductivity. The textured ZnO:Al films are used to enhance the light trapping in thin film solar cells. The wet etch process is used to texture ZnO:Al films by dipping in diluted acidic solutions like HCl or HF. During that process the glass substrate could be damaged by the acidic solution and it may be difficult to apply it for the inline mass production process since it has to be done outside the chamber. In this paper we report a new technique to control the surface morphology of RF-sputtered ZnO:Al films. The ZnO:Al films are textured with vaporized HF formed by the mixture of HF and H2SiO3 solution. Even though the surface of textured ZnO:Al films by vapor etching process showed smaller and sharper surface structures compared to that of the films textured by wet etching, the haze value was dramatically improved. We achieved the high haze value of 78% at the wavelength of 540 nm by increasing etching time and HF concentration. The haze value of about 58% was achieved at the wavelength of 800 nm when vapor texturing was used. The ZnO:Al film texture by HCl had haze ratio of about 9.5 % at 800 nm and less than 40 % at 540 nm. In addition to low haze ratio, the texturing by HCl was very difficult to control etching and to keep reproducibility due to its very fast etching speed.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TE
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.29-33
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• 2002

Various nanometer-scale structures are fabricated on hydrogen-passivated p-type Si(100) surface by scanning probe microscopy(SPM). The hydrogen-passivation is performed by dipping the samples in diluted 10% HF solution for one min.. Pt alloy wires are used for tips and the tips are made by cutting the wires at 45$^{\circ}$ slanted. Various line features are fabricated in various bias voltage. The optimal structure is the line of about 30 nm width on 1.7V bias voltage and 1 nA tunneling current.  

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.413-419
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• 2004

Recently, Silicon On Insulator (SOI) devices emerged to achieve better device characteristics such as higher operation speed, lower power consumption and latch-up immunity. Nevertheless, there are many detrimental defects in SOI wafers such as hydrofluoric-acid (HF)-defects, pinhole, islands, threading dislocations (TD), pyramid stacking faults (PSF), and surface roughness originating from quality of buried oxide film layer. Although the number of defects in SOI wafers has been greatly reduced over the past decade, the turn over of high-speed microprocessors using SOI wafers has been delayed because of unknown defects in SOI wafers. A new characterization method is proposed to investigate the crystalline quality, the buried oxide integrity and some electrical parameters of bonded SOI wafers. In this study, major surface defects in bonded SOI are reviewed using HF dipping, Secco etching, Cu-decoration followed by focused ion beam (FIB) and transmission electron microscope (TEM).

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.99-103
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• 2008

To improve efficiency of solar cells, it is important to make a light trapping structure to reduce surface reflectance for increasing absorption of sun light within the solar cells. One of the promising methods that can reduce surface reflectance is isotropic texturing with acid solution based on hydrofluoric acid(HF), nitric acid($HNO_3$), and organic additives. Anisotropic texturing with alkali solution is not suitable for multicrystalline silicon wafers because of its different grain orientation. Isotropic texturing with acid solution can uniformly etch multicrystalline silicon wafers unrelated with grain orientation, so we can get low surface reflectance. In this paper, the acid texturing solution is made up of only HF and $HNO_3$ for easy controlling the concentration and low cost compared to acid solution with organic additives. $HNO_3$ concentration and dipping time were varied to find the condition of minimum surface reflectance. Textured surfaces were observed Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) and surface reflectance were measured. The best result of arithmetic mean(wavelength from 400 nm to 1000 nm) reflectance with acid texturing is 4.64 % less than alkali texturing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.16-17
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• 2007

To improve efficiency of solar cells, it is important to make a light trapping structure to reduce surface reflectance for increasing absorption of sun light within the solar cells. One of the promising methods that can reduce surface reflectance is isotropic texturing with acid solution based on hydrofluoric acid(HF), nitric acid($HNO_3$), and organic additives. Anisotropic texturing with alkali solution is not suitable for multicrystalline silicon wafers because of its different grain orientation. Isotropic texturing with acid solution can uniformly etch multicrystalline silicon wafers unrelated with grain orientation, so we can get low surface reflectance. In this paper, the acid texturing solution is made up of only HF and $HNO_3$ for easy controling the concentration and low cost compared to acid solution with organic additives. $HNO_3$ concentration and dipping time were varied to find the condition of minimum surface reflectance. Textured surfaces were observed Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) and surface reflectance were measured. The best result of arithmetic mean(wavelength from 400nm to 1000nm) reflectance with acid texturing is 4.64% less than alkali texturing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.490.2-490.2
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• 2014

Since the general solar cells accept sun light at the front side, excluding the electrode area, electrons move from the emitter to the front electrode and start to collect at the grid edge. Thus the edge of gridline can be important for electrical properties of screen-printed silicon solar cells. In this study, the improvement of electrical properties in screen-printed crystalline silicon solar cells by contact treatment of grid edge was investigated. The samples with $60{\Omega}/{\square}$ and $70{\Omega}/{\square}$ emitter were prepared. After front side of samples was deposited by SiNx commercial Ag paste and Al paste were printed at front side and rear side respectively. Each sample was co-fired between $670^{\circ}C$ and $780^{\circ}C$ in the rapid thermal processing (RTP). After the firing process, the cells were dipped in 2.5% hydrofluoric acid (HF) at room temperature for various times under 60 seconds and then rinsed in deionized water. (This is called "contact treatment") After dipping in HF for a certain period, the samples from each firing condition were compared by measurement. Cell performances were measured by Suns-Voc, solar simulator, the transfer length method and a field emission scanning electron microscope. According to HF treatment, once the thin glass layer at the grid edge was etched, the current transport was changed from tunneling via Ag colloids in the glass layer to direct transport via Ag colloids between the Ag bulk and the emitter. Thus, the transfer length as well as the specific contact resistance decreased. For more details a model of the current path was proposed to explain the effect of HF treatment at the edge of the Ag grid. It is expected that HF treatment may help to improve the contact of high sheet-resistance emitter as well as the contact of a high specific contact resistance.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.49 no.12
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• pp.649-653
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• 2000

We have grown carbon nanotubes by thermal chemical vapor deposition of $C_{2}H_{2}$ on catalytic metal deposited on silicon oxide substrates. Highly purified carbon nanotubes are uniformly grown on a large area of the silicon oxide substrates. It is observed that surface modification of catalytic metals deposited on substrates by either etching with dipping in a HF solution and/or $NH_{3}$ pretreatment is a crucial step for the nanotube growth prior to the reaction of $C_{2}H_{2}$ gas. The diameters of carbon naotubes could be controlled by applying the different catalytic metals.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.954-957
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• 1999

We have synthesized carbon nanotubes by thermal chemical vapor deposition of $C_2$H$_2$ on transition metal-coated silicon substrates. Carbon nanotubes are uniformly synthesized on a large area of the plain Si substrates, different from previously reported porous Si substrates. It is observed that surface modification of transition metals deposited on substrates by either etching with dipping in a HF solution and/or NH$_3$ pretreatment is a crucial step for the nanotube growth prior to the reaction of $C_2$H$_2$gas. We will demonstrate that the diameters of carbon naotubes can be controlled by applying the different transition metals.