• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1013-1019
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• 2007

Amorphous silicon and silicon-nitride films were deposited using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method at $150^{\circ}C$. As fraction of $H_2$ in source gas was increased, characteristics of low-temperature silicon-nitride films approached those of conventional high-temperature films; the refractive index approached 1.9 and the ratio of nitrogen-hydrogen bonds to silicon-hydrogen bonds increased. And also, as fraction of $H_2$ in source gas was increased, characteristics of low-temperature silicon films approached those of conventional high-temperature films; refractive index and optical band gap approached 4.2 and 1.8 eV, and $[Si-H]/([Si-H]+[Si-H_2])$ increased. Lower RF power and process-pressure made the amorphous silicon films to be better properties. Increase of $H_2$ ratio seemed as the common factor to get reliable amorphous silicon and silicon-nitride films for thin-film-transistors (TFTs) at low temperature.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.10
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• pp.1694-1696
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• 2016

Present thin film solar cells with hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO:H) as an absorber suffer from low fill factor(FF) of 61~64 [%] in spite of its benefits related to high open circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$). Since degraded quality of a-SiO:H absorber by alloying with oxygen can affect the FF, we aimed to achieve high photosensitivity by minimizing $CO_2$ gas addition. Improving optical gap($E_{opt}$) has been attained by strong hydrogen dilution combined with lowering substrate temperature down to 100 [$^{\circ}C$]. Small amount of the $CO_2$ was added in order to disturb microcrystalline formation by high hydrogen dilution. The developed a-SiO:H has high photosensitivity (${\sim}2{\times}10^5$) and high $E_{opt}$ of 1.85 [eV], which contributed to attain remarkable FF of 74 [%] and high $V_{oc}$ (>1 [V]). As a result, high power conversion efficiency of 7.18 [%] was demonstrated by using very thin absorber layer of only 100 [nm], even though we processed all experiment at extremely low temperature of 100 [$^{\circ}C$].

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.476-479
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• 2000

In this study, mesh-type PECVD system was suggested to minimize the hydrogen concentration. The main structural difference between the triode system and a conventional system is that a mesh was attached to the substrate holding electrode. We investigated several conditions to compare with conventional PECVD. The main effect of mesh was to minimize the substrate damage by ion bombardment and to enhance the surface reaction to induce hydrogen desorption. It was also found that hydrogen concentration decreased but deposition rate increased as increasing applied dias. Applied DC bias enhanced sputtering process. Intense ion bombardment causes the weakly bonded hydrogen or hydrogen-containing species to leave the growing film and increased adatom mobility. Furthermore, addition of hydrogen gas enhance the surface diffusion of adatom. The structural properties of poly-Si films were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy(SEM).

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.07b
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• pp.1116-1118
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• 2005

We studied laser crystallization of amorphous silicon films prepared at ultra low temperatures ($<150^{\circ}C$). Amorphous silicon films having a low content of hydrogen were deposited by using catalytic chemical vapor deposition method. Influence of process parameters on the hydrogen content was investigated. Laser crystallization was performed dispensing with the preliminary dehydrogenation process. Crystallization took place at a laser energy density value as low as $70\;mJ/cm^2$, and the grain size increased with increasing the laser energy. The ELA crystallization of Catalytic CVD a-Si film is a promising candidate for Poly-Si TFT in active-matrix flexible display on plastic substrates.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2000

It is increasingly necessary to use poly-Si n's as high resolution and integration of Tn for LCD. Excimer Laser Crystallization (ELC) of a-Si is mainly used as a low temperature process. But the ELC method for the fabrication of poly-Si has the eruption problems associated with hydrogen in the a-Si film. So we need a dehydro-genation process additionally. Hydrogen in a-Si film can degrade the quality of poly-Si film and electrical properties of device due to the hydrogen eruption and voids which occur during the excimer laser annealing. In this study, we propose mesh-type PECVD as the a-Si film deposition method for achieving the low concentration hydrogen. Mesh-type PECVD was found to reduce the hydrogen content substantially. We could obtain a as-deposited a-Si film with hydrogen contents less than $1\%$ at $300^{\circ}C$. We also investigated the behavior by XeCl excimer laser annealing of a-Si fabricated by mesh-type PECVB. As a result, we were able to confirm the broad process window in contrast to the narrow process range typically obtained in ELC. Hydrogen eruption was not observed in poly-Si films after ELC These results suggests that mesh-type PECVD is a viable method to achieve the low hydrogen content a-Si and improve the process windows for ELC.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.34-41
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• 1979

In the work reported here we have sputtered from silicon targets in argon-silane mixtures using undoped n-type and p-type targets. Doped films have been produced, but the doping efficiency is extremely low. It appears that the dopant atoms are able to satisfy their natural valencies and are therefore not electrically active. Infra-red absorption spectroscopy has been used to establish the hydrogen bonding in the films. No correlation has been found between the nature of the hydrogen bonding in the film and the electrical properties.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.785-789
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• 2005

Low temperature deposition of silicon and silicon nitride films by catalytic CVD technique was studied for application to thin film transistors on plastic substrates for flexible AMOLEDs. The substrate temperature initially held at room temperature, and was controlled successfully below $150^{\circ}C$ during the entire deposition process. Amorphous silicon films having good adhesion, good surface morphology and sufficiently low content of atomic hydrogen were obtained and could be successfully crystallized using excimer laser without a prior dehydrogenation step. $SiN_x$ films showed a good refractive index, a high deposition rate, a moderate breakdown field and a dielectric constant. The Cat-CVD silicon and silicon nitride films can be good candidates for fabricating thin films transistors on plastic substrates to drive active-matrix organic light emitting display.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.4 no.S1
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• pp.34-39
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• 1995

Various silicon films were prepared by thermal- and UV photo-CVD processes. The reactants were SiH4, Si2H6, SiH2F2, SIF4, and H2. Silicon films grown at temperatures below $500 ^{\circ}C$ were either amorphous or crystalline depending on the process conditions, and the growth rates ranged between 5 and $80\AA$min. Crystallinity of the film was improved even at $250^{\circ}C$ when the film was grown by photo-CVD using fluoro-silanes as the reactants. Analysis of the film by RBS, SIMS, XRD, and ex-situ IR indicated that substrate surface was contaminated by oxygen and other impurities when the reactants contained neither hydrogen nor fluoro-silnanes, but when fluoro-silanes were used as reactants the silicon film was highly crystalline.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.236.1-236.1
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• 2015

The surface morphology of front transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films is very important to achieve high current density in amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin film solar cells since it can scatter the light in a better way. In this study, we present the low cost hydrothermal deposited uniform zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-flower structure with various aspect ratios for a-Si thin film solar cells. The ZnO nano-flower structures with various aspect ratios were grown on the RF magnetron sputtered AZO films. The diameters and length of the ZnO nano-flowers was controlled by varying the annealing time. The length of ZnO nano-flowers were varied from 400 nm to $2{\mu}m$ while diameter was kept higher than 200 nm to obtain different aspect ratios. The ZnO nano-flowers with higher surface area as compared to conventional ZnO nano structure are preferred for the better light scattering. The conductivity and crystallinity of ZnO nano-flowers can be enhanced by annealing in hydrogen atmosphere at 350 oC. The vertical aligned ZnO nano-flowers showed higher haze ratio as compared to the commercially available FTO films. We also observed that the scattering in the longer wavelength region was favored for the high aspect ratio of ZnO nano-flowers. Therefore, we proposed low cost and vertically aligned ZnO nano-flowers for the high performance of thin film solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.05c
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• pp.83-87
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• 2002

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD) silicon nitride ($SiN_X$) is widely used as a gate dielectric material for the hydrogenated amorphous silicon(a-Si:H) thin film transistors (TFT's). We investigated $SiN_X$ films were deposited PECVD at low temperature ($300^{\circ}C$). The reaction gases were used pure nitrogen and a helium diluted of silane gas(20% $SiH_4$, 80% He). Experimental investigations were carried out with the variation of $N_2/SiH_4$ flow ratios from 3 to 50 and the rf power of 200 W. This article presents the $SiN_X$ gate dielectric studies in terms of deposition rate, hydrogen content, etch rate and C-V, leakage current density characteristics for the gate dielectric layer of thin film transistor applications. Electrical properties were analyzed through high frequency (1MHz) C-V and current-voltage (I-V) measurements. The thickness and the refractive index on the films were measured by ellipsometry and chemical bonds were determined by using an FT-IR equipment.