• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.314-314
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• 2013

Recently, flexibility is one of the hottest issues in the field of electronic devices. For flexible displays or solar cells, a development of transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) with flexibility, bendability and foldability is an essential element. Hundreds of nanometers indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films have been widely used and commercialized as a transparent electrode, but their brittleness make them difficulty to apply flexible electronics. Many researchers have been studying for flexible TCEs such as a few layers of graphene sheets, carbon nanotube networks, conductive polymer films and combinations among them. Although gained flexibility, their transmittance and resistivity have not reached those of commercialized ITO films. Metal grids electrode cannot act as TCEs only, but they can be used to lower the resistance of TCEs with few losses of transmittance. However, the possibility of device shortage will be rise at the devices with metal grids because a surface flatness of TCEs may be deteriorated when metal grids are introduced using conventional methods. In our research, we have developed hybrid TCEs, which combined tens of nanometers ITO film and metal grids which are embedded in flexible substrate. They show $13{\Omega}$/${\Box}f$ sheet resistance with 94% of transmittance. Moreover, the sheet resistance was maintained up to 1 mm of bending radius. Also, we have verified that flexible organic light emitting diodes and organic solar cells with the TCEs showed similar performances compared to commercial ITO (on glass substrate) devices.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.421-428
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• 2012

We investigated an electrochemical properties for Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) nano-films of polyimide and phospholipid mixture. LB films of polyamic acid and phospholipid monolayer were deposited by the Langmuir-Blodgett method on the indium tin oxide(ITO) glass. The electrochemical properties measured by cyclic voltammetry with three-electrode system(an Ag/AgCl reference electrode, a platinum wire counter electrode and LB film-coated ITO working electrode) in $KClO_4$ solution. The current of reduction and oxidation range was measured from 1650 mV to -1350 mV, continuously. The scan rates were 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 mV/s, respectively. As a result, monolayer LB films of polyamic acid and phospholipid mixture was appeared on irreversible process caused by the reduction current from the cyclic voltammogram. Diffusion coefficient (D) effect in the polyamic acid and phospholipid mixture was used in the LAPC with LLPC fewer than the diffusion coefficient values.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.58-59
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• 2006

Top emission OLED 소자에 사용되는 ITO(Indium-Tin-Oxide)의 저항을 개선하여 보다 낮은 저항을 가지는 전극을 제작하기 위해 AZO(ZnO-Ag-ZnO)를 제작하였다. AZO박막은 기존의 ITO 박막이 수십 $\Omega$을 나타내던 것과 비교하여 $8{\Omega}$으로 매우 낮은 저항을 나타내었다. 투과율은 84%로 기존의 ITO 박막과 유사한 성능을 나타내었다.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.138-142
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• 2004

The polyaniline films of emeraldine base (EB) and leucoemeraldine base (LEB) form doped with cam-phorsulfonic acid (CSA) were prepared by casting the mixed solution of chloroform and m-cresol on ITO (indium tin oxide) electrode. By analyzing UV-vis spectra of the mixed solutions, the effects of the secondary doping by m-cresol were obtained. And the conductivity of polyaniline film was increased with increasing m-cresol content. As the results of analyzing cyclic voltammograms, it was known that the redox peak currents of polyaniline electrode prepared from LEB were larger and more reversible than those of polyaniline eleclrodes prepared from EB. The charge transfer resistances $(R_{ct})$ of polyaniline electrodes were reduced with increasing m-cresol content, showing smaller Rct for LEB/CSA than EB/CSA.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.5.1-5.1
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• 2009

Organic photovoltaic (OPV)cells have attracted considerable attention due to their potential for flexible, lightweight, and low-cost application of solar energy conversion. Since a 1% power conversion efficiency (PCE) OPV based on a single donor-acceptor heterojunction was reported by Tang, the PCE has steadily improved around 5%. It is well known that a high parallel (shunt)resistance and a low series resistance are required simultaneously to achieve ideal photovoltaic devices. The device should be free of leakage current through the device to maximize the parallel resistance. The series resistance is attributed to the ohmic loss in the whole device, which includes the bulk resistance and the contact resistance. The bulk resistance originated from the bulk resistance of the organic layer and the electrodes; the contact resistance comes from the interface between the electrodes and the active layer. Furthermore, it has been reported that the bulk resistance of the indium tin oxide (ITO) of the devices dominates the series resistance of OPVs for a large area more than $0.01\;cm^2$. Therefore, in practical application, the large area of ITO may significantly reduce the device performance. In this work, we investigated the effect of sheet resistance ($R_{sh}$) of deposited ITO on the performance of OPVs. It was found that the device performance of polythiophene-fullerene (P3HT:PCBM) bulk heterojunction OPVs was critically dependent on Rsh of the ITO electrode. With decreasing $R_{sh}$ of the ITO from 39 to $8.5\;{\Omega}/{\square}$, the fill factor (FF) of OPVs was dramatically improved from 0.407 to 0.580, resulting in improvement of PCE from $1.63{\pm}0.2$ to $2.5{\pm}0.1%$ underan AM1.5 simulated solar intensity of $100\;mW/cm^2$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.450-450
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• 2006

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) as pixels for flat panel displays are being actively pursued because of their relatively simple structure, high brightness, and self-emitting nature [1, 2]. The top-emitting diode structure is preferred because of their geometrical advantage allowing high pixel resolution [3]. To enhance the performance of TOLEDs, it is important to deposit transparent top cathode films, such as transparent conducting oxides (TCOs), which have high transparency as well as low resistance. In this work, we report on investigation of the characteristics of an indium tin oxide (ITO) cathode electrode, which was deposited on organic films by using a radio-frequency magnetron sputtering method, for use in top-emitting organic light emitting diodes (TOLED). The cathode electrode composed of a very thin layer of Mg-Ag and an overlaying ITO film. The Mg-Ag reduces the contact resistivity and plasma damage to the underlying organic layer during the ITO sputtering process. Transfer length method (TLM) patterns were defined by the standard shadow mask for measuring specific contact resistances. The spacing between the TLM pads varied from 30 to $75\;{\mu}m$. The electrical properties of ITO as a function of the deposition and annealing conditions were investigated. The surface roughness as a function of the plasma conditions was determined by Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM).

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.380-381
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• 2007

This paper reports on the deposition conditions and properties of ITO films used as electrode layer in a organic light emitting diodes on a PET substrate. The deposition technique employed was specially designed roll-to-roll sputtering. The oxide was deposited at room temperature in an argon and oxygen plasma on a transparent conducting ITO layer on a PET film. The influence of deposition parameters such as DC power, working pressure and oxygen partial pressure has been investigated, in order to obtain the best compromise between a high deposition rate and adequate electro-optical properties. Electrical and optical properties of ITO films were analyzed by Hall measurement examinations with van der pauw geometry at room temperature and UV/Vis spectrometer analysis, respectively. In addition, the structural properties and surface smoothness were measured by x-ray diffraction and scaning electron microscopy, respectively. From optimized ITO films grown by roll-to-roll sputter system, good electrical$(6.44{\times}10^{-4}\;{\Omega}-cm)$ and optical(above 86 % at 550 nm) properties were obtained. Also, the ITO films exhibited amorphous structure and very flat surface beacause of low deposition temperature.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2014

Flexible transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) have recently attracted a great deal of attention owing to rapid advances in flexible electronic devices, such as flexible displays, flexible photovoltanics, and e-papers. As the performance and reliability of flexible electronics are critically affected by the quality of TCE films, it is imperative to develop TCE films with low resistivity and high transparency as well as high flexibility. Indium tin oxide (ITO) has been the most dominant transparent conducting material due to its high optical transparency and electrical conductivity. However, ITO is susceptible to cracking and delamination when it is bent or deformed. Therefore, various types of flexible TCEs, such as carbon nanotube, conducting polymers, graphene, metal mesh, Ag nanowires (NWs), and metal mesh have been extensively investigated. Among several options to replace ITO film, Ag NWs and metal mesh have been suggested as the promising candidate for flexible TCEs. In this paper, we focused on Ag NWs and metal mesh, and summarized the current development status of Ag NWs and metal mesh. The several critical issues such as high contact resistance and haze are discussed, and newly developed technologies to resolve these issues are also presented. In particular, the flexibility and durability of Ag NWs and metal mesh was compared with ITO electrode.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.288-289
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• 2011

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is a typical highly Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) currently used as a transparent electrode material. Most widely used deposition method is the sputtering process for ITO film deposition because it has a high deposition rate, allows accurate control of the film thickness and easy deposition process and high electrical/optical properties. However, to apply high quality ITO thin film in a flexible microelectronic device using a plastic substrate, conventional DC magnetron sputtering (DMS) processed ITO thin film is not suitable because it needs a high temperature thermal annealing process to obtain high optical transmittance and low resistivity, while the generally plastic substrates has low glass transition temperatures. In the room temperature sputtering process, the electrical property degradation of ITO thin film is caused by negative oxygen ions effect. This high energy negative oxygen ions(about over 100eV) can be critical physical bombardment damages against the formation of the ITO thin film, and this damage does not recover in the room temperature process that does not offer thermal annealing. Hence new ITO deposition process that can provide the high electrical/optical properties of the ITO film at room temperature is needed. To solve these limitations we develop the Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) system. The MFSS is based on DMS and it has the plasma limiter, which compose the permanent magnet array (Fig.1). During the ITO thin film deposition in the MFSS process, the electrons in the plasma are trapped by the magnetic field at the plasma limiters. The plasma limiter, which has a negative potential in the MFSS process, prevents to the damage by negative oxygen ions bombardment, and increases the heat(-) up effect by the Ar ions in the bulk plasma. Fig. 2. shows the electrical properties of the MFSS ITO thin film and DMS ITO thin film at room temperature. With the increase of the sputtering pressure, the resistivity of DMS ITO increases. On the other hand, the resistivity of the MFSS ITO slightly increases and becomes lower than that of the DMS ITO at all sputtering pressures. The lowest resistivity of the DMS ITO is $1.0{\times}10-3{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ and that of the MFSS ITO is $4.5{\times}10-4{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. This resistivity difference is caused by the carrier mobility. The carrier mobility of the MFSS ITO is 40 $cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, which is significantly higher than that of the DMS ITO (10 $cm^2/V{\cdot}s$). The low resistivity and high carrier mobility of the MFSS ITO are due to the magnetic field shielded effect. In addition, although not shown in this paper, the roughness of the MFSS ITO thin film is lower than that of the DMS ITO thin film, and TEM, XRD and XPS analysis of the MFSS ITO show the nano-crystalline structure. As a result, the MFSS process can effectively prevent to the high energy negative oxygen ions bombardment and supply activation energies by accelerating Ar ions in the plasma; therefore, high quality ITO can be deposited at room temperature.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.294-300
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• 1995

The photoelectrochemical behavior of polypyrrole films on Pt, glassy-C and indium tin oxide(ITO) under illumination was studied in aqueous solution containing a redox couple such as I-/I2 or Fe(CN)64-/Fe(CN)63-. Polypyrrole(PPy) was coated on Pt, glassy-C and ITO electrodes using electrochemical polymerization of pyrrole by potentiostatic method. Illumination of the PPy film results in the increase of cathodic and anodic currents at redox potentials of the redox species. These enhanced currents are caused both by the semiconductor characteristics of PPy and by the photothermal acceleration of redox reaction at PPy-electrode surface, and are dependent on the pH of redox solutions and the dopants in PPy.