• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.1091-1097
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• 2019

After the Fukushima accident in 2011, there has been increased public concern about radioactive contamination of water resources through fallout in neighboring countries. However, there is still no available initial response system that can promptly detect radionuclides. The purpose of this research is to develop the most efficient gamma spectrometer to monitor radionuclides in an aquatic environment. We chose a thallium-doped sodium iodide (NaI(Tl)) scintillator readout with a silicon photo multiplier (SiPM) due to its compactness and low operating voltage. Three types of a scintillation detector were tested. One was composed of a scintillator and a photomultiplier tube (PMT) as a reference; another system consisted of a scintillator and an array of SiPMs with a light guide; and the other was a scintillator directly coupled with an array of SiPMs. Among the SiPM-based detectors, the direct coupling system showed the best energy resolution at all energy peaks. It achieved 9.76% energy resolution for a 662 keV gamma ray. Through additional experiments and a simulation, we proved that the light guide degraded energy resolution with increasing statistical uncertainty. The results indicated that the SiPM-based scintillation detector with no light guide is the most efficient design for monitoring radionuclides in an aquatic environment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2016.10a
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• pp.61-62
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• 2016

In this paper, a design method for a compact stepped open slot antenna for an operation in the UWB band is studied. The proposed antenna is miniaturized by inserting L-shaped slots on the ground plane of the stepped open slot antenna through the creation of a resonance in the low frequency, and a strip director is appended to the antenna in order to increase the gain in the middle and high frequency regions. The effects of varying the length of the L-shaped slots, the distance between the director and the slot antenna, and the director length on input reflection coefficient and realized gain characteristics of the proposed antenna are analyzed. The optimized antenna with the size of $30mm{\times}30mm$ is fabricated on an FR4 substrate, and the experiment results show that the antenna has a frequency band of 3.02-11.04 GHz for a VSWR < 2, which assures the operation in the UWB band.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.917-924
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• 2019

This paper presents a wideband low noise amplifier (LNA) that is suitable for LTE-Advanced and 5G communication standards employing carrier aggregation (CA). The proposed LNA encompasses a common input stage and a dual output second stage with a buffer at each distinct output. This architecture is targeted to operate in both intra-band (contiguous and non-contiguous) and inter-band CA. In the proposed design, the input and second stages employ a gm enhancement with resistive feedback technique to achieve self-biasing, enhanced gain, wide bandwidth as well as reduced noise figure of the proposed LNA. An up/down power controller controls the single input single out (SISO) and single input multiple outputs (SIMO) modes of operation for inter-band and intra-band operations. The proposed LNA is designed with a 45nm CMOS technology. For SISO mode of operation, the LNA operates from 0.52GHz to 4.29GHz with a maximum power gain of 17.77dB, 2.88dB minimum noise figure and input (output) matching performance better than -10dB. For SIMO mode of operation, the proposed LNA operates from 0.52GHz to 4.44GHz with a maximum voltage gain of 18.30dB, a minimum noise figure of 2.82dB with equally good matching performance. An $IIP_3$ value of -6.7dBm is achieved in both SISO and SIMO operations. with a maximum current of 42mA consumed (LNA+buffer in SIMO operation) from a 1.2V supply.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.858-864
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• 2019

A clock system is proposed to eliminate data loss due to frequency difference between sensor nodes in a sensor utility network. The proposed clock system for each sensor node consists of a bust clock-data recovery (CDR) circuit, a digital phase-locked loop outputting a 32-phase clock, and a digital frequency synthesizer using a programmable open-loop fractional divider. A CMOS oscillator using an active inductor is used instead of a burst CDR circuit for the first sensor node. The proposed clock system is designed by using a 65 nm CMOS process with a 1.2 V supply voltage. When the frequency error between the sensor nodes is 1%, the proposed burst CDR has a time jitter of only 4.95 ns with a frequency multiplied by 64 for a data rate of 5 Mbps as the reference clock. Furthermore, the frequency change of the designed digital frequency synthesizer is performed within one period of the output clock in the frequency range of 100 kHz to 320 MHz.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.219-227
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• 2019

Polycystic kidney disease 2-like-1 (PKD2L1), polycystin-L or transient receptor potential polycystin 3 (TRPP3) is a TRP superfamily member. It is a calcium-permeable non-selective cation channel that regulates intracellular calcium concentration and thereby calcium signaling. Although the calmodulin (CaM) inhibitor, calmidazolium, is an activator of the PKD2L1 channel, the activating mechanism remains unclear. The purpose of this study is to clarify whether CaM takes part in the regulation of the PKD2L1 channel, and if so, how. With patch clamp techniques, we observed the current amplitudes of PKD2L1 significantly reduced when co-expressed with CaM and $CaM{\triangle}N$. This result suggests that the N-lobe of CaM carries a more crucial role in regulating PKD2L1 and guides us into our next question on the different functions of two lobes of CaM. We also identified the predicted CaM binding site, and generated deletion and truncation mutants. The mutants showed significant reduction in currents losing PKD2L1 current-voltage curve, suggesting that the C-terminal region from 590 to 600 is crucial for maintaining the functionality of the PKD2L1 channel. With PKD2L1608Stop mutant showing increased current amplitudes, we further examined the functional importance of EF-hand domain. Along with co-expression of CaM, ${\triangle}EF$-hand mutant also showed significant changes in current amplitudes and potentiation time. Our findings suggest that there is a constitutive inhibition of EF-hand and binding of CaM C-lobe on the channel in low calcium concentration. At higher calcium concentration, calcium ions occupy the N-lobe as well as the EF-hand domain, allowing the two to compete to bind to the channel.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.415-422
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• 2021

Silicene, a 2D allotrope of silicon, is predicted to be a potential material for future transistor that might be compatible with present silicon fabrication technology. Similar to graphene, silicene exhibits the honeycomb lattice structure. Consequently, silicene is a semimetallic material, preventing its application as a field-effect transistor. Therefore, this work proposes the uniform doping bandgap engineering technique to obtain the n-type silicene nanosheet. By applying nearest neighbour tight-binding approach and parabolic band assumption, the analytical modelling equations for band structure, density of states, electrons and holes concentrations, intrinsic electrons velocity, and ideal ballistic current transport characteristics are computed. All simulations are done by using MATLAB. The results show that a bandgap of 0.66 eV has been induced in uniformly doped silicene with phosphorus (PSi₃NW) in the zigzag direction. Moreover, the relationships between intrinsic velocity to different temperatures and carrier concentration are further studied in this paper. The results show that the ballistic carrier velocity of PSi₃NW is independent on temperature within the degenerate regime. In addition, an ideal room temperature subthreshold swing of 60 mV/dec is extracted from ballistic current-voltage transfer characteristics. In conclusion, the PSi₃NW is a potential nanomaterial for future electronics applications, particularly in the digital switching applications.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2021

In this study, quantum dot-sensitized solar cells (QDSSC) using CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QD) of various sizes with green, yellow, and red colors are developed. Quantum dots, depending their different sizes, have advantages of absorbing light of various wavelengths. This absorption of light of various wavelengths increases the photocurrent production of solar cells. The absorption and emission peaks and excellent photochemical properties of the synthesized quantum dots are confirmed through UV-visible and photoluminescence (PL) analysis. In TEM analysis, the average sizes of individual green, yellow, and red quantum dots are shown to be 5 nm, 6 nm, and 8 nm. The J-V curves of QDSSC for one type of QD show a current density of 1.7 mA/㎠ and an open-circuit voltage of 0.49 V, while QDSSC using three type of QDs shows improved electrical characteristics of 5.52 mA/㎠ and 0.52 V. As a result, the photoelectric conversion efficiency of QDSSC using one type of QD is as low as 0.53 %, but QDSSC using three type of QDs has a measured efficiency of 1.4 %.

• Current Applied Physics
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• v.18 no.12
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• pp.1571-1576
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• 2018

Recent study shows that the main reason for limiting CZTS device performance lies in the low open circuit voltage, and crucial factor that could affect the $V_{oc}$ is secondary phases like ZnS existing in absorber layer and its interfaces. In this work, the $Cu_2ZnSnS_4$ thin film solar cells were prepared by sputtering CuSn and CuZn alloy targets. Through tuning the Zn/Sn ratios of the CZTS thin films, the crystal structure, morphology, chemical composition and phase purity of CZTS thin films were characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and Raman spectroscopy. The statistics data show that the CZTS solar cell with a ratio of Zn/Sn = 1.2 have the best power convention efficiency of 5.07%. After HCl etching process, the CZTS thin film solar cell with the highest efficiency 5.41% was obtained, which demonstrated that CZTS film solar cells with high efficiency could be developed by sputtering CuSn and CuZn alloy targets.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.10
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• pp.683-690
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• 2008

In order to develop transparent electrodes for high efficiency GaN-based light emitting diodes (LEDs), the electrical and optical properties of the electron beam evaporated ITO contacts have been investigated as a function of the deposition temperature and flow rate of oxygen during the deposition. As the deposition temperature increases from $140^{\circ}C$ to $220^{\circ}C$, the resistivity of the ITO films decreases slightly from $4.0{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}cm$ to $3.3{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}cm$, meanwhile the transmittance of the ITO films significantly increases from 67% to 88% at the wavelength of 470 nm. When the flow rate of oxygen during the deposition increases from 2 sccm to 4 sccm, the resistivity of the ITO films increases from $3.6{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}cm$ to $7.4{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}cm$, meanwhile the transmittance of the ITO films increases from 86% to 99% at 470 nm. Blue LEDs fabricated with the electron beam evaporated ITO electrode show that the ITO films deposited at $200^{\circ}C$ and 3 sccm of the oxygen flow rate give a low forward-bias voltage of 3.55 V at injection current of 20 mA with a highest output power.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.113-117
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• 2020

In this paper, We investigated the effect of heat treatment process using photo-thermal effect in order to improve mechanical properties of nanostructure on polymer films made by nanoimprint process with hybrid resin. Nanostructures which have a low refractive characteristic were fabricated by UV nanoimprint and after that heat treatment was performed using IPL (intense pulsed light) under process condition of 550 V voltage, pulse width 5 ms, frequency 0.5 Hz. The transmittance and mechanical property of fabricated nanostructure films were evaluated to observe changes in the pattern transfer rate and mechanical properties of nanostructures. The transmittance of the nanostructure was measured at 97.6% at 550 nm wavelength. Nanoindentation was performed to identify improved anti-scatch properties. Result was compared by the heat source. In case of post treatment with IPL, hardness was 0.51 GPa and in the case of hotplate was 0.27 GPa, resulting the increase of hardness of 1.8 times. Elastic modulus of IPL treated sample was 5.9GPa and Hotplate treated one was 4GPa, showing the 1.4 time increase.