• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.448-448
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• 2010

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) has made a prominent progress in memory performance and has brought a bright prospect for the next generation nonvolatile memory technologies due to its excellent advantages. Dry etching process of magnetic thin films is one of the important issues for the magnetic devices such as magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) based MRAM. CoFeB is a well-known soft ferromagnetic material, of particular interest for magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) and other devices based on tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR), such as spin-transfer-torque MRAM. One particular example is the CoFeB - MgO - CoFeB system, which has already been integrated in MRAM. In all of these applications, knowledge of control over the etching properties of CoFeB is crucial. Recently, transferring the pattern by using milling is a commonly used, although the redeposition of back-sputtered etch products on the sidewalls and the low etch rate of this method are main disadvantages. So the other method which has reported about much higher etch rates of >$50{\AA}/s$ for magnetic multi-layer structures using $Cl_2$/Ar plasmas is proposed. However, the chlorinated etch residues on the sidewalls of the etched features tend to severely corrode the magnetic material. Besides avoiding corrosion, during etching facets format the sidewalls of the mask due to physical sputtering of the mask material. Therefore, in this work, magnetic material such as CoFeB was etched in an ICP etching system using the gases which can be expected to form volatile metallo-organic compounds. As the gases, carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia ($NH_3$) were used as etching gases to form carbonyl volatiles, and the etched features of CoFeB thin films under by Ta masking material were observed with electron microscopy to confirm etched resolution. And the etch conditions such as bias power, gas combination flow, process pressure, and source power were varied to find out and control the properties of magnetic layer during the process.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.437-444
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• 2000

We investigated the effect of substrate temperature, chemical composition and post-deposition heat-treatment on the crystal structure and electrical transport of $La_{1-x}Sr_xMnO_{3-{\delta}}$(0.19${\leq}x{\leq}$0.31) thin films. As-prepared $La_{1-x}Sr_xMnO_{3-{\delta}}$ films grown at $500^{\circ}C$ by sputter techniques were found to have the pseudo-tetragonal system(a/c=0.97) and a highly preferential <001> orientation. The films were changed to be of the cubic system by post-deposition annealing at around $900^{\circ}C$. A main target of $La_{0.67}Sr_{0.33}MnO_3$ as well as auxliary targets of $La_{0.3}Sr_{0.7}MnO_3$ ceramics were co-sputtered to control the chemical composition of the film. The Sr content(x) of the film ranged from 0.19 to 0.31, depending on the number of the auxiliary target. When x increased from 0.19 to 0.31, the electrical resistivity of the film decreased and the transition temperature between metal and semiconductor shifted to higher temperature. With a magnetic field of 0.18 T, the magneto-resistance ratio (MR(%) = (${\rho}_o-{\rho}_H/{\rho}_H$) of the $La_{0.69}Sr_{0.31}MnO_3$ thin film was about 390%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.10
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• pp.656-663
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• 2012

After the construction of waterworks automatic meter reading with 15 mm diameter digital water mater with magnetoresistance sensor developed in this study at 96 households of apartment complexes located in Incheon-City B-Gu S-Dong, the feasibility of field application of waterworks automatic meter reading was evaluated. The field application of waterworks automatic meter reading was performed from July to December in 2011, and average reception rate was as low as 84.6% due to the instable wibro networks, the existence of communication blackout and temporary malfunction of router. After the extraction of 10 households with one to five residents out of 96 households by using stratified random sampling method and analysis of domestic water use, it was found that domestic water use was significant at August and showed a decreasing trend at September, followed by increase in domestic water use at November and decrease in domestic water use at December. This phenomenon should be attributed to weather factors (temperature, humidity, etc.), which significantly affected domestic water use. Similar trend in domestic water use in terms of weather factors was obtained in case of Liter per capita day of water use after the extraction of 30 households out of 96 households by using stratified random sampling method. After analysis of Liter per capita day for 96 households, single residents increases resulted in reduction of domestic water usage by about 14% of Liter per capita day. These results might be due to the fact that domestic water usage such as laundry, beverages, catering, cleaning, etc. should be required for even the household with one resident, whereas domestic water usage for those common utilization can be significantly saved for the household with more than one resident.