• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.531-534
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• 2015

In this work, we undertake a comparative study of the crystallographic microstructures and photo-catalytic properties of rutile $TiO_2$ nanorods grown on FTO facing up and down by a hydrothermal method. An analysis of the fine structures showed that $TiO_2$ nanorods grown on FTO facing up were mixed with sea urchin and microsphere. These structures induced a vertical orientation of the nanorods on FTO. The saturated photocurrent densities of the $TiO_2$ nanorods grown both up and down were $1.5mA/cm^2$ in the former case, the IPCE was increased to 10% at 300~350 nm. The onset potential (${\fallingdotseq}$ flat band potential) of the nanorods grown on FTO facing up is negatively shifted to a value of -0.31 V. This is caused by an increase in the surface state, in this case the number of oxygen vacancies, and by the formation of $Ti^{3+}$. Therefore, the FTO facing direction is considered as a critical factor during the hydrothermal reaction for $TiO_2$ growth so as to develop an efficient photo-catalytic system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.461.1-461.1
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• 2014

본 연구진에서는 기존에 Ag2S 양자점을 흡광층으로 활용하여 양자점 감응형 태양전지(QDSC)를 제작, 그 성능과 특징을 분석하여 발표한 바 있다. 기존 연구에서 제작된 Ag2S QDSC는 11 mA/cm2의 비교적 높은 광전류와 260 mV의 비교적 낮은 전압으로 인해 1.2%의 광전환효율 성능을 나타내는 것으로 보고되었다. 추후 연구로 진행된 본 결과에서는, 기존에 Single absorber로 사용된 Ag2S의 한계를 보완하기 위해 CdS를 도입하여 co-sensitization을 활용하였다. CdS는 약 2.3 eV의 밴드갭 에너지를 갖는 물질로, 1.1 eV의 밴드갭을 갖는 Ag2S에 비해 흡광 영역은 좁지만 그만큼 전자-정공 재결합을 억제할 수 있는 장점을 가지고 있다. 또한, 전도층으로 사용한 n-type 물질인 ZnO 나노선과의 밴드구조가 매우 적합하게 조화되어, ZnO/CdS/Ag2S 순서로 이종구조를 접합시켰을 때 세 물질의 Conduction band level과 Valence band level이 순차적으로 연결되는 cascade-shaped 밴드구조를 이루게 된다. 빛을 받아 Ag2S와 CdS에서 생성된 전자는 이 cascade 모양의 conduction band를 따라 순차적으로 ZnO로 잘 전달되게 되어, 효율 향상에 큰 도움을 주었다. 이런 장점들로 인해, CdS-Ag2S co-sensitized QDSC는 Ag2S QDSC에 비해 2배나 향상된 효율인 2.4%를 기록하였으며, 이는 IPCE spectrum 측정 등으로 근거가 뒷받침되었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.100-100
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• 2009

$TiO_2$ is widely being used as a semiconductor electrode for DSSC. Anti-recombination property and surface area of $TiO_2$ give an important influence to the DSSC efficiency. In this study, $TiO_2$ electrode was fabricated on FTO using screen printing method. Various overlayers were coated on them by dip coating in solution of saturated $Ba(NO_3)_2$, $Mg(NO_3)_2$ and $N_{2}O_{6}Sr$. They reduced the recombination of electrons from photo excited state of Ru dye. The atmospheric plasma treatment was applied to both the $TiO_2$ and each overlayer coated $TiO_2$ surfaces to improve contact ability with dye. We prepared four samples, one sample has bare $TiO_2$ surfaces to improve contact ability with dye. We prepared four samples, one sample has bare $TiO_2$ electrode and the other samples consist of each overlayer coated $TiO_2$ electrodes. We used XRD, FE-SEM, J-V, IPCE and EIS in order to investigate characteristic.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.385-385
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• 2009

Uniform polyaniline nanofibers (PANI NFs), and chemically doped sulfamic acid(SFA) PANI NFs, synthesized via template free interfacial polymerization process, were used as new counter electrodes materials for the fabrication of the highly-efficient dyesensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The PANI NFs based fabricated DSSCs exhibited a solarto-electricity conversion efficiency of ~ 4.02% while, the SFA doped PANI NFs based DSSC demonstrated ~ 27% improvement in the solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency. The obtained solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency for SFA doped PANI NFs based DSSC was 5.47% under 100mW/$cm^2$(AM1.5). The enhancement in the conversion efficiency was due to the incorporation of SFA into the PANI NFs which resulted to the higher electrocatalytic activity for the $I^{3-}/I^-$ redox reaction.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.2269-2279
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• 2009

Six metal-free organic dyes having thiophene (1), benzene-thiophene (2), thiophene-benzene (3), thiophene-pyridine (4), thiophene-thiophene (5), and pyridine (6) linkers between 9,9-dimethylfluorenyl terminal group and $\alpha$-cyanoacrylic acid anchor were synthesized. Among them, organic dye 5 showed the longest ${\lambda}_{max}$ value (424 nm) in UV-Vis absorption spectrum, better incident monochromatic photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE), highest short circuit photocurrent density ($J_{SC},\;9.33\;mA^2/cm^2$), and highest overall conversion efficiency ($\eta$, 3.91%).

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.8
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• pp.1407-1411
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• 2008

In material processing, a laser system with optimal laser parameters has been considered to be significant. Especially, the laser scribing technology is thought to be very important for fabricating DSSC(Dye sensitized solar eel!) modules with good quality. Moreover, the $TEM_{00}$ mode laser beam is the most dominant factor to decide the IPCE(Incident photon to current conversion efficiency) characteristics. In order to get the $TEM_{00}$ mode, a pin-hole is inserted within a simple pulsed Nd:YAG laser resonator. And the spatial field distribution is measured by using three size pin-hole diameters of 2.0, 6.0mm respectively. At that moment, each case has the same laser beam energy by adjusting the discharge voltage and pps(pulse per second). From those results, it is known that the pin-hole size of 2.0mm has the perfect $TEM_{00}$ mode. In addition, at the charging voltage of 1000V, 10pps and the feeding speed of 1.11mm/sec, the SEM photo of FTO(Fluorine-doped tin oxide) thin film layers shows the best scribing trace.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.317-317
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• 2010

This paper reports syntheses of $TiO_2$ nanocubes and theirs application to DSSC. We synthesized $TiO_2$ nanocubes via solvothermal method using titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) and tetramethylammoiumhydroxide (TMAH). By adding longer alkyl chain ammonium hydroxide that slowed down the growth rate of the crystal, $TiO_2$ nanocubes were obtained with average particle size in the range of 40 nm to 70 nm. By TEM investigation, each particle was found to be single crystal of anatase having six-faces of (001) and {100} crystallographic planes truncated by {101} series of planes, which are clearly distinguishable from spherical nanoparticles. Among various application, utilizing nanocubes as photo-electrode in dye-sensitized solar cell, we investigated photo-electron conversion performances in comparison with spherical shaped $TiO_2$ nanoparticles by I-V characteristics and IPCE measurements, etc.. Photocurrent-transient analysis revealed that $TiO_2$ nanocubes have a higher transient electron transfer rate by more than 10 times compared with spherical particles of similar size. Fast electron transport along the cube edges having small curvature was suggested as a plausible origin of high diffusion coefficient of electron in nanocube $TiO_2$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.310.1-310.1
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• 2013

We show the novel hot electron based-solar energy conversion using tandem structured Schottky diode with double Schottky barriers. In this report, we show the effect of the double Schottky barriers on solar cell performance by enhancing both of internal photoemission and band-to-band excitation. The tandem structured Au/Si diode capped with TiO2 layer as second semiconductor exhibited improved ability for light harvesting. The proposed mechanisms consist of multiple reflections of hot electrons and additional pathway of solar energy conversion due to presence of multiple interfaces between thin gold film and semiconductors. Short-circuit photocurrent measured on the tandem structured Au/Si diodes under illumination of AM1.5 increased by approximately 70% from 3.1% to 5.3% and overall incident photon to electron conversion efficiency (IPCE) was enhanced in visible light, revealing that the concept of the double Schottky barriers have significant potential as novel strategy for light harvesting.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.392-399
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• 2019

A highly transparent interfacial layer (HTIL) to enhance the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was prepared via a polymer-assisted (PA) approach. Poly(vinyl chloride)-graft-poly(oxyethylene methacrylate) (PVC-g-POEM) was synthesized via atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and was used as a sacrificial template. The PVC-g-POEM graft copolymer induced partial coordination of a hydrophilic titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) sol-gel solution with the POEM domain, resulting in microphase separation, and in turn, the generation of mesopores upon calcination. These phenomena were confirmed using Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, UV-visible light transmittance spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The DSSCs incorporating HTIL60/20 (consisting of a top layer with a pore size of 60 nm and a bottom layer with a pore size of 20 nm) exhibited the best overall conversion efficiency (6.36%) among the tested samples, which was 25.9% higher than that of a conventional blocking layer (BL). DSSC was further characterized using the Nyquist plot and incident-photon to electron conversion efficiency (IPCE) spectra.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.88.1-88.1
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• 2010

Organic dyes, because of their many advantages, such as high molar extinction coefficients, convenience of customized molecular design for desired photophysical and photochemical properties, inexpensiveness with no transition metals contained, and environment-friendliness, are suitable as photosensitizers for the Dye-sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC). The efficiency of DSSC based on metal-free organic dyes is known to be much lower than that of Ru dyes generally, but a high solar energy-to-electricity conversion efficiency of up to 8% in full sunlight has been achieved by Ito et al. using an indoline dye. This result suggests that smartly designed and synthesized metal-free organic dyes are also highly competitive candidates for photosensitizers of DSSCs with their advantages mentioned above. Recently, the performance of DSSC based on metal-free organic dyes has been remarkably improved by several groups. We had reported the novel organic dye with double electron acceptor chromophore, which was a new strategy to design an efficient photosensitizer for DSSC. To verify the strategy, we synthesized organic dyes whose geometries, electronic structures and optical properties were derived from preceding density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations. In this paper, we successfully synthesized the chromophore containing multi-acceptor push-pull system from triphenylamine with thiophene moieties as a bridge unit. Organic dyes with a single electron acceptor and double acceptor system were also synthesized for comparison purposes. The photovoltaic performances of these dyes were compared, and the recombination dark current curves and the incident photon-to-current (IPCE) efficiencies were also measured in order to characterize the effects of the multi-anchoring groups on the open-circuit voltage and the short-circuit current. In order to match specifications required for practical applications to be implemented outdoors, light soaking and thermal stability tests of these DSSCs, performed under $100mWcm^{-2}$ and $60^{\circ}C$ for 1000h.