• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.375-375
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• 2010

CdTe as an absorber material is widely used in thin film solar cells with the heterostructure due to its almost ideal band gap energy of 1.45 eV, high photovoltaic conversion efficiency, low cost and stable performance. The deposition methods and preparation conditions for the fabrication of CdTe are very important for the achievement of high solar cell conversion efficiency. There are some rearranged reports about the deposition methods available for the preparation of CdTe thin films such as close spaced sublimation (CSS), physical vapor deposition (PVD), vacuum evaporation, vapor transport deposition (VTD), closed space vapor transport, electrodeposition, screen printing, spray pyrolysis, metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), and RF sputtering. The RF sputtering method for the preparation of CdTe thin films has important advantages in that the thin films can be prepared at low growth temperatures with large-area deposition suitable for mass-production. The authors reported that the optical and electrical properties of CdTe thin film were closely connected by the thickness-uniformity of the film in the previous study [1], which means that the better optical absorbance and the higher carrier concentration could be obtained in the better condition of thickness-uniformity for CdTe thin film. The thickness-uniformity could be controlled and improved by the some process parameters such as vacuum level and RF power in the sputtering process of CdTe thin films. However, there is a limitation to improve the thickness-uniformity only in the preparation process [1]. So it is necessary to introduce the external or additional method for improving the thickness-uniformity of CdTe thin film because the cell size of thin film solar cell will be enlarged. Therefore, the authors firstly applied the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process to improving the thickness-uniformity of CdTe thin films with a G&P POLI-450 CMP polisher [2]. CMP process is the most important process in semiconductor manufacturing processes in order to planarize the surface of the wafer even over 300 mm and to form the copper interconnects with damascene process. Some important CMP characteristics for CdTe were obtained including removal rate (RR), WIWNU%, RMS roughness, and peak-to-valley roughness [2]. With these important results, the CMP process for CdTe thin films was performed to improve the thickness-uniformity of the sputtering-deposited CdTe thin film which had the worst two thickness-uniformities of them. Some optical properties including optical transmittance and absorbance of the CdTe thin films were measured by using a UV-Visible spectrophotometer (Varian Techtron, Cary500scan) in the range of 400 - 800 nm. After CMP process, the thickness-uniformities became better than that of the best condition in the previous sputtering process of CdTe thin films. Consequently, the optical properties were directly affected by the thickness-uniformity of CdTe thin film. The absorbance of CdTe thin films was improved although the thickness of CdTe thin film was not changed.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.104-111
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• 1998

The InGaAs/InP quantum wells(QWs) were grown by low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition and the effects of growth interruption steps on their interfacial structures were investigated by measuring photoluminescence spectra. When InP or InGaAs surface was treated under the same group V ambient, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the QW peak increased possibly due to the incorporation of impurities during the growth interruption time. When InP surface was treated under $AsH_3$, howerer, the PL peak showed red-shift due to the As-P exchange reaction and the change of FWHM was not remarkable. The effective thickness of InAs interfacial layer formed during $AsH_3$, treatment on the InP surface was calculated to be 1~2 monolayers. In the case of InGaAs treatment under $PH_3$, the PL peak energy and the FWHM increasied. This results suggest that $PH_3$ treatment on the InGaAs surface suppresses the incorporation of As into the subsequent InP layer and the local replacement of As by P occurs simultaneously.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.171-171
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• 2010

GaN 기반 Light emitting diodes(LEDs)의 p-type doping layer는 일반적으로 hole을 발생시키는 acceptor로 Mg이 사용하되고 있다. 보통 Mg이 도핑된 p-type GaN은 >$1\;{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$의 저항이 존재하는데 그 이유는 Mg의 열적 이온화를 위한 activation 에너지가 높아서 상온에서 valence band의 hole concentration는 전체 억셉터 농도의 1%가 되지 않기 ��문이다. 본 논문에서는 높은 hole 농도를 얻기 위해서 metalorganic chemical-vapor deposition (MOCVD)를 장비를 사용하여 사파이어 기판의 misorientation-angle에 따른 p-type a-plane(11-20) GaN 특성을 분석하였다. misorientation-angle은 c축 방향으로 $+0.15^{\circ}$, $-0.15^{\circ}$, $-0.2^{\circ}$, $-0.4^{\circ}$ off된 r-plane(1-102) 사파이어 기판 을 사용하였다. p-type 도핑물질로 bis-magnesium (Cp2Mg) 소스를 사용하였고 성장 과정중 발생하는 hydrogen passivation으로 인한 Mg-H complexes현상을 해결하기위해 conventional furnace annealing (CFA)와 rapid thermal annealing (RTA)를 이용하여 열처리 공정을 진행하였다. 열처리 공정은 Air와 N2 분위기에서 $650^{\circ}C$에서 $900^{\circ}C$ 사이의 다양한 온도에서 수행하였고 Hall 측정을 위해 Ni을 전극 물질로 사용하였다. 상온에서 Accent HL5500IU Hall system을 사용하여 hole concentration, mobility, specific resistance을 측정하였다. 열처리 공정 후 Hall측정 결과 $+0.15^{\circ}$, $-0.15^{\circ}$, $-0.2^{\circ}$, $-0.4^{\circ}$ off된 각 샘플들은 온도, 시간, 분위기에 따라 hole concentration ($7.4{\times}10^{16}cm^{-3}{\sim}6{\times}10^{17}cm^{-3}$), mobility(${\mu}h=\;1.72\;cm^2/V-s\;{\sim}15.2\;cm^2/V-s$), specific resistance(4.971 ohm-cm ~8.924 ohm-cm) 가 변화됨을 확인 할 수 있었다. 또한 광학적 특성을 분석하기 위해 Photoluminescence (PL)을 측정하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.31-31
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• 2010

The growth of the high-quality GaN epilayers is of significant technological importance because of their commercializedoptoelectronic applications as high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs) in the visible and ultraviolet spectral range. The GaN-based heterostructural epilayers have the polar c-axis of the hexagonal structure perpendicular to the interfaces of the active layers. The Ga and N atoms in the c-GaN are alternatively stacked along the polar [0001] crystallographic direction, which leads to spontaneous polarization. In addition, in the InGaN/GaN MQWs, the stress applied along the same axis contributes topiezoelectric polarization, and thus the total polarization is determined as the sum of spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations. The total polarization in the c-GaN heterolayers, which can generate internal fields and spatial separation of the electron and hole wave functions and consequently a decrease of efficiency and peak shift. One of the possible solutions to eliminate these undesirable effects is to grow GaN-based epilayers in nonpolar orientations. The polarization effects in the GaN are eliminated by growing the films along the nonpolar [$11\bar{2}0$] ($\alpha$-GaN) or [$1\bar{1}00$] (m-GaN) orientation. Although the use of the nonpolar epilayers in wurtzite structure clearly removes the polarization matters, however, it induces another problem related to the formation of a high density of planar defects. The large lattice mismatch between sapphiresubstrates and GaN layers leads to a high density of defects (dislocations and stacking faults). The dominant defects observed in the GaN epilayers with wurtzite structure are one-dimensional (1D) dislocations and two-dimensional (2D) stacking faults. In particular, the 1D threading dislocations in the c-GaN are generated from the film/substrate interface due to their large lattice and thermal coefficient mismatch. However, because the c-GaN epilayers were grown along the normal direction to the basal slip planes, the generation of basal stacking faults (BSFs) is localized on the c-plane and the generated BSFs did not propagate into the surface during the growth. Thus, the primary defects in the c-GaN epilayers are 1D threading dislocations. Occasionally, the particular planar defects such as prismatic stacking faults (PSFs) and inversion domain boundaries are observed. However, since the basal slip planes in the $\alpha$-GaN are parallel to the growth direction unlike c-GaN, the BSFs with lower formation energy can be easily formed along the growth direction, where the BSFs propagate straightly into the surface. Consequently, the lattice mismatch between film and substrate in $\alpha$-GaN epilayers is mainly relaxed through the formation of BSFs. These 2D planar defects are placed along only one direction in the cross-sectional view. Thus, the nonpolar $\alpha$-GaN films have different atomic arrangements along the two orthogonal directions ($[0001]_{GaN}$ and $[\bar{1}100]_{GaN}$ axes) on the $\alpha$-plane, which are expected to induce anisotropic biaxial strain. In this study, the anisotropic strain relaxation behaviors in the nonpolar $\alpha$-GaN epilayers grown on ($1\bar{1}02$) r-plane sapphire substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVO) were investigated, and the formation mechanism of the abnormal zigzag shape PSFs was discussed using high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM).