• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.152-158
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• 2022

Thermoelectric materials can reversely convert heat and electricity into each other; therefore, they can be very useful for energy harvesting from heat waste. Among many thermoelectrical materials, SnSe exhibits outstanding thermoelectric performance along the particular direction of a single crystal. However, single-crystal SnSe has poor mechanical properties and thus it is difficult to apply for mass production. Therefore, polycrystalline SnSe materials may be used to replace single-crystal SnSe by overcoming its inferior thermoelectric performance owing to surface oxidation. Considerable efforts are currently focused on enhancing the thermoelectric performance of polycrystalline SnSe. In this study, we briefly review various enhancement methods for SnSe thermoelectric materials, including doping, texturing, and nano-structuring. Finally, we discuss the future prospects of SnSe thermoelectric powder materials.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.301-306
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• 2016

The effects of nanotexturing and post-etching on the reflection and quantum efficiency properties of diamond wire sawn (DWS) multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cell have been investigated. The chemical solutions, which are acidic etching solution (HF-$HNO_3$), metal assisted chemical etching (MAC etch) solutions ($AgNO_3$-HF-DI, HF-$H_2O_2$-DI) and post-etching solution (diluted KOH at $80^{\circ}C$), were used for micro- and nano-texturing at the surface of diamond wire sawn (DWS) mc-Si wafer. Experiments were performed with various post-etching time conditions in order to determine the optimized etching condition for solar cell. The reflectance of mc-Si wafer texturing with acidic etching solution showed a very high reflectance value of about 30% (w/o anti-reflection coating), which indicates the insufficient light absorption for solar cell. The formation of nano-texture on the surface of mc-Si contributed to the enhancement of light absorption. Also, post-etching time condition of 240 s was found adequate to the nano-texturing of mc-Si due to its high external quantum efficiency of about 30% at short wavelengths and high short circuit current density ($J_{sc}$) of $35.4mA/cm^2$.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.345-348
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• 2012

The optical losses associated with the reflectance of incident radiation are among the most important factors limiting the efficiency of a solar cell. Therefore, photovoltaic cells normally require special surface structures or materials, which can reduce reflectance. In this study, nano-scale textured structures with anti-reflection properties were successfully formed on silicon. The surface of sicon wafer was etched by the inductively coupled plasma process using the gaseous mixture of $SF_6+O_2$. We demonstrate that the reflection characteristic has significantly reduced by ~0% compared with the flat surface. As a result, the power efficiency $P_{max}$ of the nano-scale textured silicon solar cell were enhanced up to 20%, which can be ascribed primarily to the improved light trapping in the proposed nano-scale texturing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.10a
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• pp.947-949
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• 2012

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.182-183
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• 2014

Hemispherical dimples with diameter, ø=$60{\mu}m$ and depth, d= $30{\mu}m$ were created on the metal and ceramics surfaces using INYA 10 watt Laser of 1064 nm wavelength. This study reports the influence of dimple pitch on friction and wear behavior rather than dimple size, depth and density. LST was performed on the specimens with dimple pitch and density in the range of 80 to-$200{\mu}m$ and 44 to 7 %, respectively. Surface topography was analyzed by using roughness measurement, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and optical microscopy. Friction and wear characteristics were analyzed on textured surfaces at lubricating environment to observe the effect of surface texturing on reduction of friction and wear. Reduction on coefficient of friction was achieved by more than 70% due to the dual behavior of dimples as wear (debris) traps and lubricant reservoirs. Wear reduced significantly for the textured surface as compared to the polished surface. Moreover, the friction coefficient of the textured specimens reduced with increasing load and speed which may be attributed to the transition of lubrication regime.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.454-461
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• 2015

Light enhancement of GaN based light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been investigated by texturing the top p-GaN surface. Nano-textured LEDs have been fabricated using self-assembled Ni nano mask during dry etching process. Experimental results were further compared with simulation data. Three types of LEDs were fabricated: Conventional (planar LED), Surface nano-porous (porous LED) and Surface nano-cluster (cluster LED). Compared to planar LED there were about 100% and 54% enhancement of light output power for porous and cluster LED respectively at an injection current of 20 mA. Moreover, simulation result showed consistency with experimental result. The increased probability of light scattering at the nano-textured GaN-air interface is the major reason for increasing the light extraction efficiency.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.225-232
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• 2011

Reactive ion etching (RIE) technique for maskless surface texturing of mc-silicon solar wafers has been applied and succeed in fabricating a grass-like black-silicon with an average reflectance of $4{\pm}1%$ in a wavelength range of 300~1,200 nm. In order to investigate the optimized texturing conditions for mass production of high quantum efficiency solar cell Surface characteristics such as the spatial distribution of average reflectance, micrscopic surface morphology and minority carrier lifetime were monitored for samples from saw-damaged $15.6{\times}15.6\;cm^2$ bare wafer to key-processed wafers as well as the mc-Si solar cells. We observed that RIE textured wafers reveal lower average reflectance along from center to edges by 1% and referred the origin to the non-uniform surface structures with a depth of 2 times deeper and half-maximum width of 3 times. Samples with anti-reflection coating after forming emitter layer also revealed longer minority carrier lifetime by 40% for the edge compared to wafer center due to size effects. As results, mc-Si solar cells with RIE-textured surface also revealed higher efficiency by 2% and better external quantum efficiency by 15% for edge positions with higher height.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.841-845
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• 2013

We give a textured front on silicon wafer for high-efficiency solar cells by using micro contact printing method which uses PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) silicon rubber as a stamp and SAM (self assembled monolayer)s as an ink. A random pyramidal texturing have been widely used for a front-surface texturing in low cost manufacturing line although the cell with random pyramids on front surface shows relatively low efficiency than the cell with inverted pyramids patterned by normal optical lithography. In the past two decades, the micro contact printing has been intensively studied in nano technology field for high resolution patterns on silicon wafer. However, this promising printing technique has surprisingly never applied so far to silicon based solar cell industry despite their simplicity of process and attractive aspects in terms of cost competitiveness. We employ a MHA (16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid) as an ink for Au deposited $SiO_2/Si$ substrate. The $SiO_2$ pattern which is same as the pattern printed by SAM ink on Au surface and later acts as a hard resist for anisotropic silicon etching was made by HF solution, and then inverted pyramidal pattern is formed after anisotropic wet etching. We compare three textured surface with different morphology (random texture, random pyramids and inverted pyramids) and then different geometry of inverted pyramid arrays in terms of reflectivity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.440-443
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• 2010

We report a top-down approach based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) local anodic oxidation for the fabrication of the nano-pattern field effect transistors (FETs). AFM anodic oxidation is relatively a simple process in atmosphere at room temperature but it still can result in patterns with a high spatial resolution, and compatibility with conventional silicon CMOS process. In this work, we study nano-pattern FETs for various cross-bar distance value D, from ${\sim}0.5\;{\mu}m$ to $1\;{\mu}m$. We compare the optical characteristics of the patterned FETs and of the reference FETs based on both 2-dimensional simulation and experimental results for the wavelength from 100 nm to 900 nm. The simulated the drain current of the nano-patterned FETs shows significantly higher value incident the reference FETs from ${\sim}1.7\;{\times}\;10^{-6}A$ to ${\sim}2.3\;{\times}\;10^{-6}A$ in the infrared range. The fabricated surface texturing of photo-transistors may be applied for high-efficiency photovoltaic devices.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.239-246
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• 2019

Various surface texturing techniques have been studied because of the effective applicability of micro or nano scale surface patterns. Particularly, the most promising types of patterns include the hierarchical patterns, which consists of micro/nano structures. Different processes such as MEMS, laser machining, micro cutting and micro grinding have been applied in the production of hierarchical patterns on various material surfaces. This study demonstrates the process of hot imprinting to induce the hierarchical patterns on the Al alloy surfaces. Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process was used to imprint molds with micro scale sinusoidal pattern. In addition, the sinusoidal pattern with rough surface morphology was obtained as a result of the discharge craters. Consequently, the hierarchical patterns consisting of the sinusoidal pattern and the discharge craters were prepared on the imprinting mold surface. Hot imprinting process for the Al plates was conducted on the prepared mold, and the replication performance was analyzed. As a result, it was confirmed that the hierarchical patterns of the mold were effectively duplicated on the surface of Al plate.