• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.71-74
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• 2002

The apparent barrier height for charge transfer through an interfacial water layer between a Pt/Ir tip and a gold surface has been measured using STM technique. The average thickness of the interfacial water layer inside an STM junction was controlled by the amount of moisture. A thin water layer on the surface was formed when relative humidity was in the range of 10 to 80%. In such a case, electron tunneling through the thin water layer became the majority of charge transfers. The value of the barrier height for the electron tunneling was determined to be 0.95 eV from the current vs. distance curve, which was independent of the tip-sample distance. On the other hand, the apparent barrier height for charge transfer showed a dependence on tip-sample distance in the bias range of 0.1-0.5 V at a relative humidity of approximately 96%. The non-exponentiality for current decay under these conditions has been explained in terms of electron tunneling and electrochemical processes. In addition, the plateau current was observed at a large tip-sample distance, which was caused by electrochemical processes and was dependent on the applied voltage.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.74-74
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• 2011

Polymer solar cells utilize bulk heterojunction (BHJ) type photo-active layer in which the electron donating polymer and electron accepting C60 derivatives are mixed together. In the BHJ system the electron donating polymer and electron accepting C60 derivatives are blended. The blended system causes charge recombination at the interface between the BHJ active layer and electrode. To reduce the charge recombination at the interface, it is needed to use an interlayer that can selectively transfer electrons or holes. We have developed solution processable wide band gap inorganic interfacial layers for polymer solar cells. The effect of interlayers on the performance of polymer solar cell was investigated for various types of conjugated polymers. We have found that inorganic interfacial layers enhanced the solar cell efficiency through the reduction of charge recombination at the interface between active layer and electrode. Furthermore, the stability of the polymer solar cell using the interlayer was significantly improved. The efficiency of 6.5% was obtained from the PTB7:PCBM70 based solar cells utilizing $TiO_2$nanoparticles as an interlayers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2002.06a
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• pp.38-39
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• 2002

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.67-67
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• 2011

Compound semiconductor/CNTs composites have shown considerably improved efficiency improvement in photovoltaic devices, which is often attributed to two different factors. One is the formation of efficient electronic energy cascade structures. The other effect of CNTs on the performance of photovoltaic devices is the decrement of interfacial resistance. The interfacial resistances at n-type/ p-type materials and/or n-type materials/TCO electrode are reduced by an outstanding electrical property of CNTs. In addition to the effects of CNTs, we report the third reason for increment of efficiency in photovoltaic devices by CNT's well-known electrical field enhancement effects. The improved ${\beta}$ values in reverse-FE currents of CIGS electrode with SWNTs layers indicate the enhancement of electrical field in photovoltaic devices, which implies the acceleration of the electron transfer rate in the cell. Due to the formation of an efficient electronic energy cascade structure and the decrease of the interfacial resistance as well as the improvement of the electrical field in the photovoltaic devices, the power conversion efficiency of electrochemically deposited superstrate-type CIGS solar cells was increased 24.3% in the presence of SWNTs and showed 10.40% conversion efficiency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.129.2-129.2
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• 2013

Electron injection enhancement at OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) cathode side has mostly been achieved by insertion of a low work function layer between metal electrode and emissive layer. We investigated the interfacial chemical reactions and electronic structures of alkaline-earth metal (Ca, Ba)/Alq3 [tris(8-hydroxyquinolinato)aluminium] and Ca/BaF2/Alq3 using in-situ X-ray & ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy. The alkaline-earth metal deposited on Alq3 generates two energetically separated gap states in sequential manner. This phenomenon is explained by step-by-step charge transfer from alkali-earth metal to the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) states of Alq3, forming new occupied states below Fermi level. The BaF2 interlayer initially prevents from direct contact between Alq3 and reactive Ca metal, but it is dissociated into Ba and CaF2. However, as the Ca thickness increases, the Ca penetrates the interlayer to directly participate in the reaction with underlying Alq3. The influence of the multiple gap state formation by the interfacial chemical reaction on the OLED performance will be discussed.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.834-836
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• 2009

We investigated the device performance for organic light-emitting characteristics based on the electron-injecting interfacial characteristics of Ba deposited on tris(8-quinolinolato)aluminum (III) ($Alq_3$) with a change of a Ba coverage. The device performance of organic light-emitting diodes with Ba coverage of 1 nm significantly improved by the lowering of the electron-injecting barrier height that was induced by electronic charge transfer. However, the device with Ba coverage above 1 nm showed poor device performance. The spectroscopic results indicated that the $Alq_3$ molecules started to decompose by the reaction between Ba and the phenoxide moiety of the molecule.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.70-70
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• 2013

As the costs of carbon-footprinetd fuels grow continuously and simultaneously atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increases, solar fuels are receiving growing attention as alternative clean energy carriers. These fuels include molecular hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide produced from water, and hydrocarbons converted from carbon dioxide. For high efficiency solar fuel production, not only light absorbers (oxide semiconductors, Si, inorganic complexes, etc) should absorb most sunlight, but also charge separation and interfacial charge transfers need to occur efficiently. With this in mind, this talk will introduce the fundamentals of solar fuel production and artificial photosynthesis, and then discuss in detail on photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting and CO2 conversion. This talk largely divides into two section: PEC water oxidation and PEC CO2 reduction. The former is very important for proton-coupled electron transfer to CO2. For this oxidation, a variety of oxide semiconductors have been tested including TiO2, ZnO, WO3, BiVO4, and Fe2O3. Although they are essentially capable of oxidizing water into molecular oxygen, the efficiency is very low primarily because of high overpotentials and slow kinetics. This challenge has been overcome by coupling with oxygen evolving catalysts (OECs) and/or doping donor elements. In the latter, surface-modified p-Si electrodes are fabricated to absorb visible light and catalyze the CO2 reduction. For modification, metal nanoparticles are electrodeposited on the p-Si and their PEC performance is compared.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.227-241
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• 2008

This article involves a unified treatment of equilibrium thermodynamics of the chemical reaction coupled with other interfacial (phase boundary) reactions. The modified (restrictive) chemical potential ${\mu}_k^+$, such as electrochemical potential, hydrostatic-chemical (mechanochemical) potential (exceptionally in the presence of the pressure difference) and surface-chemical potential, was first introduced under the isothermal and isobaric conditions. This article then enlightened the equilibrium conditions in case where the release of chemical energy is counterbalanced by the supply of electrical energy, by the supply of hydrostatic work (exceptionally in the presence of ${\Delta}p$), and finally by the release of surface energy, respectively, at constant temperature T and pressure p in terms of the modified chemical potential ${\mu}_k^+$. Finally, this paper focussed on the difference between chemical and electrochemical equilibria based upon the fundamentals of the isothermal and isobaric equilibrium conditions described above.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.400.1-400.1
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• 2016

Interfacial engineering approaches as an efficient strategy for improving the power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of inverted polymer solar cells (iPSCs) has attracted considerable attention. Recently, polymer surface modifiers, such as poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI) and polyethylenimine ethoxylated (PEIE), were introduced to produce low WF electrodes and were reported to have good electron selectivity for inverted polymer solar cells (iPSCs) without an n-type metal oxide layer. To obtain more efficient solar cells, quantum dots (QDs) are used as effective sensitizers across a broad spectral range from visible to near IR. Additionally, they have the ability to efficiently generate multiple excitons from a single photon via a process called carrier multiplication (CM) or multiple exciton generation (MEG). However, in general, it is very difficult to prepare a bilayer structure with an organic layer and a QD interlayer through a solution process, because most solvents can dissolve and destroy the organic layer and QD interlayer. To present a more effective strategy for surpassing the limitations of traditional methods, we studied and fabricated the highly efficient iPSCs with mono-layered QDs as an effective multi-functional layer, to enhance the quantum yield caused by various effects of QDs monolayer. The mono-layered QDs play the multi-functional role as surface modifier, sub-photosensitizer and electron transport layer. Using this effective approach, we achieve the highest conversion efficiency of ~10.3% resulting from improved interfacial properties and efficient charge transfer, which is verified by various analysis tools.