• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.817-821
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• 2000

In this work, we have investigated the dependence of annealing temperature(T$\_$a/) on optical and electrical properties of amorphous hydrogenated SiC(a-SiC:H) films. The a-SiC:H films were deposited on corning glass and p-type Si(100) wafer by PECVD (plasma enhanced vapor deposition) using SiH$_4$+CH$_4$+N$_2$ gas mixture. The experimental results have shown that the optical energy band gap(E$\_$opt/)of the thin films annealed at high temperatures have shown that the graphitization of carbon clusters and micro-crystalline silicon occurs. The current-voltage characteristics have shown good electrical properties at the annealed films.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.747-750
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• 2000

In this work, we investigated the dependence of optical and electrical properties of amorphous hydrogenated SiC (a-SiC:H) films on annealing temperature(T$\sub$a/). The a-SiC:H films were deposited by PECVD(plasma enhanced vapor deposition) on coming glass, p-type Si(100) wafer using SiH$_4$+CH$_4$+N$_2$gas mixture. The experimental results have shown that the optical energy band gap(E$\sub$g/) of the a-SiC thin films unchanged in the range of T$\sub$a/ from 400$^{\circ}C$ to 600$^{\circ}C$. The Raman spectrum of the thin films, annealed at high temperatures, has shown that graphitization of carbon clusters and micro-crystalline silicon occurs. The current-voltage characteristics have shown good electrical properties at the annealed films.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.844-847
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• 2008

The photo leakage currents of a conventional hydrogenated amorphous silicon(a-Si:H) thin film transistor(TFT) were investigated and analyzed in case of illumination from various light sources such as halogen lamp, cold cathode fluorescent lamp(CCFL) backlight, and white light emitting diode(LED) backlight. The photo leakage characteristics showed the apparent differences in the leakage level and in the $I_{on}/I_{off}$ ratio in spite of the similar luminances of light sources. This leakage level is expected to be related to the wavelength of the lowest intensity peak from the spectral characteristics of light sources.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.254-255
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• 2012

Interest in nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin films has been growing because of their favorable processing conditions for certain electronic devices. In particular, there has been an increase in the use of nc-Si thin films in photovoltaics for large solar cell panels and in thin film transistors for large flat panel displays. One of the most important material properties for these device applications is the macroscopic charge-carrier mobility. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) or nc-Si is a basic material in thin film transistors (TFTs). However, a-Si:H based devices have low carrier mobility and bias instability due to their metastable properties. The large number of trap sites and incomplete hydrogen passivation of a-Si:H film produce limited carrier transport. The basic electrical properties, including the carrier mobility and stability, of nc-Si TFTs might be superior to those of a-Si:H thin film. However, typical nc-Si thin films tend to have mobilities similar to a-Si films, although changes in the processing conditions can enhance the mobility. In polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films, the performance of the devices is strongly influenced by the boundaries between neighboring crystalline grains. These grain boundaries limit the conductance of macroscopic regions comprised of multiple grains. In much of the work on poly-Si thin films, it was shown that the performance of TFTs was largely determined by the number and location of the grain boundaries within the channel. Hence, efforts were made to reduce the total number of grain boundaries by increasing the average grain size. However, even a small number of grain boundaries can significantly reduce the macroscopic charge carrier mobility. The nano-crystalline or polymorphous-Si development for TFT and solar cells have been employed to compensate for disadvantage inherent to a-Si and micro-crystalline silicon (${\mu}$-Si). Recently, a novel process for deposition of nano-crystralline silicon (nc-Si) thin films at room temperature was developed using neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBaCVD) with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300 eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at room temperature. In previous our experiments, we verified favorable properties of nc-Si thin films for certain electronic devices. During the formation of the nc-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. The more resent work on nc-Si thin film transistors (TFT) was done. We identified the performance of nc-Si TFT active channeal layers. The dependence of the performance of nc-Si TFT on the primary process parameters is explored. Raman, FT-IR and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to study the microstructures and the crystalline volume fraction of nc-Si films. The electric properties were investigated on Cr/SiO2/nc-Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.68-73
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• 2008

It is very important that constitution of good hetero-junction interface with a high quality amorphous silicon thin films on very cleaned c-Si wafer for making high efficiency hetero-junction solar cells. For achieving the high efficiency solar cells, the inspection and management of c-Si wafer surface conditions are essential subjects. In this experiment, we analyzed the c-Si wafer surface very sensitively using Spectroscopic Ellipsometer for < ${\varepsilon}2$ > and u-PCD for effective carrier life time, so we accomplished < ${\varepsilon}2$ > value 43.02 at 4.25eV by optimizing the cleaning process which is representative of c-Si wafer surface conditions very well. We carried out that the deposition of high quality hydrogenated silicon amorphous thin films by RF-PECVD systems having high density and low crystallinity which are results of effective medium approximation modeling and fitting using spectroscopic ellipsometer. We reached the cell efficiency 12.67% and 14.30% on flat and textured CZ c-Si wafer each under AM1.5G irradiation, adopting the optimized cleaning and deposition conditions that we made. As a result, we confirmed that spectroscopic ellipsometry is very useful analyzing methode for hetero-junction solar cells which need to very thin and high quality multi layer structure.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.192-197
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• 2017

Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon (a-Si:H) is used as an emitter layer in HIT (heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar cells. Its low band gap and low optical properties (low transmittance and high absorption) cause parasitic absorption on the front side of a solar cell that significantly reduces the solar cell blue response. To overcome this, research on CSC (carrier Selective Contacts) is being actively carried out to reduce carrier recombination and improve carrier transportation as a means to approach the theoretical efficiency of silicon solar cells. Among CSC materials, molybdenum oxide ($MoO_x$) is most commonly used for the hole transport layer (HTL) of a solar cell due to its high work function and wide band gap. This paper analyzes the electrical and optical properties of $MoO_x$ thin films for use in the HTL of HIT solar cells. The optical properties of $MoO_x$ show better performance than a-Si:H and ${\mu}c-SiO_x:H$.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.103-109
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• 2014

Highly efficient hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) thin-film solar cells were prepared on flexible stainless steel substrates using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. To enhance the performance of solar cells, material properties of back reflectors, n-doped seed layers and wide bandgap nc-SiC:H window layers were optimized. The light scattering efficiency of Ag back reflectors was improved by increasing the surface roughness of the films deposited at elevated substrate temperatures. Using the n-doped seed layers with high crystallinity, the initial crystal growth of intrinsic nc-Si:H absorber layers was improved, resulting in the elimination of the defect-dense amorphous regions at the n/i interfaces. The nc-SiC:H window layers with high bandgap over 2.2 eV were deposited under high hydrogen dilution conditions. The vertical current flow of the films was enhanced by the formation of Si nanocrystallites in the amorphous SiC:H matrix. Under optimized conditions, a high conversion efficiency of 9.13% ($V_{oc}=0.52$, $J_{sc}=25.45mA/cm^2$, FF = 0.69) was achieved for the flexible nc-Si:H thin-film solar cells.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.161-168
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• 2001

Organic thin film transitors(TFTs) are of interest for use in broad area electronic applications. For example, in active matrix liquid crystal displays(AMLCDs), organic TFTs would allow the use of inexpensive, light-weight, flexible, and mechanically rugged plastic substrates as an alternative to the glass substrates needed for commonly used hydrogenated amorphous silicon(a-Si:H). Recently pentacene TFTs with carrier field effect, mobility as large as 2 $cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$ have been reported for TFTs fabricated on silicon substrates, and it is higher than that of a-Si:H. But these TFTs are fabricated on silicon wafer and $SiO_2$ was used as a gate insulator. $SiO_2$ deposition process requires a high insulator which is polyimide and photo acryl. We investigated trasfer and output characteristics of the thin film transistors having active layer of pentacene. We calculated field effect mobility and on/off ratio from transfer characteristics of pentacene thin film transistor, and measured IR absorption spectrum of polymide used as the gate dielectric layer. It was found that using the photo acryl as a gate insulator, threshold voltage decreased from -12.5 V to -7 V, field effect mobility increased from 0.012 $cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$ to 0.039 $cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$ , and on/off current ratio increased from $10^5\;to\;10^6$. It seems that TFTs using photo acryl gate insulator is apt to form channel than TFTs using polyimide gate insulator.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.271-281
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• 1992

Amorphous hydrogenated silicon carbide(a-Si1-xCx : H) films have been prepared by the rf sputtering using a silicon target in a gas mixture of Argon and methane with varying methane gas flow rate(fCH) in the range of 1.5 to 3.5 sccm at constant Argon flow rate of 30sccm and rf power in the range of 3 to 6 W/$\textrm{cm}^2$. The effects of methane flow rate and rf power on the structure and optical properties of a-Si1-xCx : H films have been analysed by measuring both the IR absorption spectrum and the UV transmittance for the films. With increasing the methane flow rate, the optical band gap(Eg) of a-Si1-xCx : H films increases gradually from 1.6eV to the maximum value of 2.42eV at rf power of 4 W/$\textrm{cm}^2$, which is due to an increases in C/Si ratio in the films by an significant increase in the number of C-Hn bonds. As the rf power increases, the number of Si-C and Si-Hn bonds increases rapidly with simultaneous reduction in the number of C-Hn bonds, which is associated with an increase in both degree of methane decomposition and sputtering of silicon. The effects of rf power on the Eg of films are considerably influenced by the methane flow rate. At low methane flow rate, the Eg of films decreased from 2.3eV to 1.8eV with the rf power. On the other hand, at high methane flow rate, that of films increased slowly to 2.4eV.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.313-320
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• 2011

100 nm-thick hydrogenated amorphous silicon $({\alpha}-Si:H)$ films were deposited on a glass and glass/30 nm Ni substrates by inductively-coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) at temperatures ranging from 100 to $550^{\circ}C$. The sheet resistance, microstructure, phase transformation and surface roughness of the films were characterized using a four-point probe, AFM (atomic force microscope), TEM (transmission electron microscope), AES (Auger electron spectroscopy), HR-XRD(high resolution X-ray diffraction), and micro-Raman spectroscopy. A nano-thick NiSi phase was formed at substrate temperatures >$400^{\circ}C$. AFM confirmed that the surface roughness did not change as the substrate temperature increased, but it increased abruptly to 6.6 nm above $400^{\circ}C$ on the glass/30 nm Ni substrates. HR-XRD and micro-Raman spectroscopy showed that all the Si samples were amorphous on the glass substrates, whereas crystalline silicon appeared at $550^{\circ}C$ on the glass/30 nm Ni substrates. These results show that crystalline NiSi and Si can be prepared simultaneously on Ni-inserted substrates.