• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.422-422
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• 2012

투명전극 산화막은 태양전지, 평판 디스플레이 등의 투명전극과 같은 광전자 소자에 사용되고 있다. 투명 전도성 산화막으로서 ITO (Indium tin oxide)는 높은 투과도, 낮은 비저항, 높은 일함수 등의 장점을 가지고 있어서 그동안 널리 사용되어 왔다. 그러나 In의 희소성으로 인한 고가격 문제 때문에 이를 대체하기 위해 불순물을 도핑한 ZnO (Zinc oxide)에 관한 연구가 활발히 진행되어 왔다. ZnO의 전기전도도를 높이기 위해 일반적으로 Al, Ga, B와 같은 3족 원소가 ZnO의 n형 도펀트로 널리 사용된다. 그 중에서 Al은 반응성이 커서 박막 증착 중에 산화되기 쉬운 반면 낮은 생산단가, 우수한 전기적 및 광학적 특성을 보이기 때문에 투명 전극으로서 Al-doped ZnO (AZO)가 많이 이용되고 있다. 본 연구에서는 rf 마그네트론 스퍼터링 공정을 이용하여 glass 기판 위에 Al-doped ZnO (AZO) 투명 전도막을 증착하였고, 수명 및 신뢰성에 영향에 미치는 주요 인자로서 온도, 온도 사이클 및 습도에 따른 AZO 박막의 열화 특성에 대한 연구를 진행하였다. 또한, 온도 사이클, 고온 및 고온고습 환경에 장시간 노출된 AZO 박막들의 성능 저하 원인들을 미세구조 관찰, 전기적 및 광학적 특성 변화들을 연계하여 규명하고자 하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.11-11
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• 2008

ZnO has a very large exciton binding energy (60 meV) as well as thermal and chemical stability, which are expected to allow efficient excitonic emission, even at room temperature. ZnO based electronic devices have attracted increasing interest as the backplanes for applications in the next-generation displays, such as active-matrix liquid crystal displays (AMLCDs) and active-matrix organic light emitting diodes (AMOLEDs), and in solid state lighting systems as a substitution for GaN based light emitting diodes (LEDs). Most of these electronic devices employ the electrical behavior of n-type semiconducting active oxides due to the difficulty in obtaining a p-type film with long-term stability and high performance. p-type ZnO films can be produced by substituting group V elements (N, P, and As) for the O sites or group I elements (Li, Na, and K) for Zn sites. However, the achievement of p-type ZnO is a difficult task due to self-compensation induced from intrinsic donor defects, such as O vacancies (Vo) and Zn interstitials ($Zn_i$), or an unintentional extrinsic donor such as H. Phosphorus (P) doped ZnO thin films were grown on c-sapphire substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering with various Ar/ $O_2$ gas ratios. Control of the electrical types in the P-doped ZnO films was achieved by varying the gas ratio with out post-annealing. The P-doped ZnO films grown at a Ar/ $O_2$ ratio of 3/1 showed p-type conductivity with a hole concentration and hole mobility of $10^{-17}cm^{-3}$ and $2.5cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, respectively. X-ray diffraction showed that the ZnO (0002) peak shifted to lower angle due to the positioning of $p^{3-}$ ions with a smaller ionic radius in the $O^{2-}$ sites. This indicates that a p-type mechanism was due to the substitutional Po. The low-temperature photoluminescence of the p-type ZnO films showed p-type related neutral acceptor-bound exciton emission. The p-ZnO/n-Si heterojunction LEO showed typical rectification behavior, which confirmed the p-type characteristics of the ZnO films in the as-deposited status, despite the deep-level related electroluminescence emission.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.463-466
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• 2010

We studied the initial reaction mechanism of Zn precursors, namely, di-methylzinc ($Zn(CH_3)_2$, DMZ) and diethylzinc ($Zn(C_2H_5)_2$, DEZ), for zinc oxide thin-film growth on a Si (001) surface using density functional theory. We calculated the migration and reaction energy barriers for DMZ and DEZ on a fully hydroxylized Si (001) surface. The Zn atom of DMZ or DEZ was adsorbed on an O atom of a hydroxyl (-OH) due to the lone pair electrons of the O atom on the Si (001) surface. The adsorbed DMZ or DEZ migrated to all available surface sites, and rotated on the O atom with low energy barriers in the range of 0.00-0.13 eV. We considered the DMZ or DEZ reaction at all available surface sites. The rotated and migrated DMZs reacted with the nearest -OH to produce a uni-methylzinc ($-ZnCH_3$, UMZ) group and methane ($CH_4$) with energy barriers in the range of 0.53-0.78 eV. In the case of the DEZs, smaller energy barriers in the range of 0.21-0.35 eV were needed for its reaction to produce a uni-ethylzinc ($-ZnC_2H_5$, UEZ) group and ethane ($C_2H_6$). Therefore, DEZ is preferred to DMZ due to its lower energy barrier for the surface reaction.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.256-256
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• 2012

Oxide semiconductors such as zinc tin oxide (ZTO) or indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) have attracted a lot of research interest owing to their high potential for application as thin film transistors (TFTs) [1,2]. However, the instability of oxide TFTs remains as an obstacle to overcome for practical applications to electronic devices. Several studies have reported that the electrical characteristics of ZnO-based transistors are very sensitive to oxygen, hydrogen, and water [3,4,5]. To improve the reliability issue for the amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) thin-film transistor, back channel passivation layer is essential for the long term bias stability. In this study, we investigated the instability of amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) thin film transistors (TFTs) by the back channel contaminations. The effect of back channel contaminations (humidity or oxygen) on oxide transistor is of importance because it might affect the transistor performance. To remove this environmental condition, we performed vacuum seasoning before the deposition of hybrid passivation layer and acquired improved stability. It was found that vacuum seasoning can remove the back channel contamination if a-IGZO film. Therefore, to achieve highly stable oxide TFTs we suggest that adsorbed chemical gas molecules have to be eliminated from the back-channel prior to forming the passivation layers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.217-217
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• 2016

The amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) is widely accepted as a promising channel material for thin-film transistor (TFT) applications owing to their outstanding electrical properties [1, 2]. However, a-IGZO TFTs have still suffered from their bias instability with illumination [1-4]. Up to now, many researchers have studied the sub-gap density of states (DOS) as the root cause of instability. It is well known that defect states can influence on the performances and stabilities of a-IGZO TFTs. The defects states should be closely related with the deposition condition, including sputtering power, and pressure. Nevertheless, it has not been reported how these defects are created during conventional RF magnetron sputtering. In general, during conventional RF magnetron sputtering process, negative oxygen ions (NOIs) can be generated by electron attachment in oxygen atom near target surface and then accelerated up to few hundreds eV by a self-bias; at this time, the high energy bombardment of NOIs induce defects in oxide thin films. Recently, we have reported that the properties of IGZO thin films are strongly related with effects of NOIs which are generated during the sputtering process [5]. From our previous results, the electrical characteristics and the chemical bonding states of a-IGZO thin films were depended with the bombardment energy of NOIs. And also, we suggest that the deep sub-gap states in a-IGZO as well as thin film properties would be influenced by the bombardment of high energetic NOIs during the sputtering process.In this study, we will introduce our novel technology named as Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process to prevent the NOIs bombardment effects and present how much to be improved the properties of a-IGZO thin film by this new deposition method. We deposited a-IGZO thin films by MFSS on SiO2/p-Si and glass substrate at various process conditions, after which we investigated the morphology, optical and electrical properties of the a-IGZO thin films.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.211-216
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• 2020

Amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O (a-IGZO) thin film transistors, because of their relatively low mobility, have limits in attempts to fulfill high-end specifications for display backplanes. In-Zn-O (IZO) is a promising semiconductor material for high mobility device applications with excellent transparency to visible light region and low temperature process capability. In this paper, the effects of working pressure on the physical and electrical properties of IZO films and thin film transistors are investigated. The working pressure is modulated from 2 mTorr to 5 mTorr, whereas the other process conditions are fixed. As the working pressure increases, the extracted optical band gap of IZO films gradually decreases. Absorption coefficient spectra indicate that subgap states increase at high working pressure. Furthermore, IZO film fabricated at low working pressure shows smoother surface morphology. As a result, IZO thin film transistors with optimum conditions exhibit excellent switching characteristics with high mobility (≥ 30㎠/Vs) and large on/off ratio.

• Clean Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.83-88
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• 2012

In order to improve the stability of ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ on hydrolysis of $SF_6$, the catalytic promoters were investigated in this study. The crystal phase of ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ is transformed to their ${\alpha}$-phase during hydrolysis of $SF_6$. Various metal oxides were applied as the promoter material that is Ga, Mg, and Zn and the promoter of 1, 5, and 10 wt% was impregnated over ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ by the impregnation method. Specially, it were confirmed in the catalytic activity tests and XRD analysis that ZnO/${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ catalyst had the high activity for decomposition of $SF_6$ by catalytic hydrolysis and the crystal phase of ZnO promoted ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ was not transformed. From these results, it could be known that the stability of ${\gamma}-Al_2O_3$ is enhanced with the catalytic promotion of ZnO impregnated over the surface of catalyst.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.69-75
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• 2017

To establish low-temperature process conditions, process-property correlation has been investigated for Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) thin films deposited by pulsed DC magnetron sputtering. Thickness of GZO films and deposition temperature were varied from 50 to 500 nm and from room temperature to $250^{\circ}C$, respectively. Electrical properties of the GZO films initially improved with increase of temperature to $150^{\circ}C$, but deteriorated subsequently with further increase of the temperature. At lower temperatures, the electrical properties improved with increasing thickness; however, at higher temperatures, increasing thickness resulted in deteriorated electrical properties. Such changes in electrical properties were correlated to the microstructural evolution, which is dependent on the deposition temperature and the film thickness. While the GZO films had c-axis preferred orientation due to preferred nucleation, structural disordering with increasing deposition temperature and film thickness promoted grain growth with a-axis orientation. Consequently, it was possible to obtain a good electrical property at relatively low deposition temperature with small thickness.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.431-431
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• 2016

Typical Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS)-based solar cells have a buffer layer between CIGS absorber layer and transparent ZnO front electrode, which plays an important role in improving the cell performance. Among various buffer materials, chemical bath deposition (CBD)-ZnS is being steadily studied to alternative to conventional CdS and the efficiency of CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell shows the comparable values with that of CdS/CIGS solar cell. The intriguing thing is that reversible changes occur after exposure to illumination due to the metastable defect states in completed ZnS/CIGS solar cell, which induces an improvement of solar cell performance. Thus, it implies that the understanding of metastable defects in CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell is important issue. In this study, we fabricate the ITO/i-ZnO/CBD-ZnS/CIGS/Mo/SLG solar cells by controlling the NH4OH mole concentration (from 2 M to 3.5 M) of CBD-ZnS buffer layer and observe their conversion efficiency with and without light soaking for 1 hr. From the results, NH4OH mole concentration and light exposure can significantly affect the CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell performance. In order to investigate that which layer can contain metastable defect states to influence on solar cell performance, impedance spectroscopy and capacitance profiling technique with exposure to illumination have been applied to CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell. These techniques give a very useful information on the density of states within the bandgap of CIGS, free carriers density, and light-induced metastable effects. Here, we present the rearranged charge distribution after exposure to illumination and suggest the origin of the metastable defect states in CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.1559-1563
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• 2011

We fabricated gallium doped ZnO (GZO, 5 wt% Ga) thin films on PES (polyethersulfon) substrate with RF magnetron sputtering and investigated optical and electrical properties for various substrate temperatures ($50{\sim}200^{\circ}C$). All GZO thin film has c-axis preferred orientation without reference to deposition conditions. As a result of AFM analysis, the GZO thin film deposited at $200^{\circ}C$ exhibited the lowest surface roughness of 0.196nm. The transmittance of GZO thin films were above 80% and Burstein-Moss effect was observed. In the analysis of Hall measurement, we confirmed that the GZO thin film deposited at $200^{\circ}C$ showed the lowest resistivity of $6.93{\times}10-4{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ and the highest carrier concentration of $7.04{\times}1020/cm^3$.