• Clean Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.217-222
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• 2021

Although monolayer black phosphorus (BP) and few-layer BP nanosheets (NSs) have been extensively studied as promising alternatives to graphene, research has focused primarily on atomically thin-layered BP in an isolated form. In order to realize the practical applications of BP-related devices, a BP film based on continuous networking of few-layer BP NSs should be developed. In this study, a transparent BP film with high quality was fabricated via a vacuum filtration method. An oxygen-free water solvent was used as an exfoliation medium to avoid significant oxidation of the few-layer BP NSs in liquid-phase exfoliation. The exfoliation efficiency from bulk BP to the few-layer BP NSs was estimated at 22%, which is highly efficient for the production of continuous BP film. The characteristics of the high-quality BP film were determined as 98% transparency, minimum oxidation of 18%, structural stability, and an appropriate bandgap of about 1.8 eV as a semiconductor layer. In order to demonstrate the potential of the BP film for photocatalytic activity, we performed photoelectrochemical water oxidation of the transparent BP film. Although its performance should be improved for practical applications, the BP film could function as a photoanode, which offers a new potential semiconductor in water oxidation. We believe that if the BP film is adequately engineered with other catalysts the photocatalytic activity of the BP film will be improved.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.258-264
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• 2019

Assembling heterostructures by combining dissimilar oxide semiconductors is a promising approach to enhance charge separation and transfer in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. In this work, the CuO nanorods array/$Cu_2O$ thin film bilayered heterostructure was successfully fabricated by a facile method that involved a direct electrodeposition of the $Cu_2O$ thin film onto the vertically oriented CuO nanorods array to serve as the photoelectrode for the PEC water oxidation. The resulting copper-oxide-based heterostructure photoelectrode exhibited an enhanced PEC performance compared to common copper-oxide-based photoelectrodes, indicating good charge separation and transfer efficiency due to the band structure realignment at the interface. The photocurrent density and the optimal photocurrent conversion efficiency obtained on the CuO nanorods/$Cu_2O$ thin film heterostructure were $0.59mA/cm^2$ and 1.10% at 1.06 V vs. RHE, respectively. These results provide a promising route to fabricating earth-abundant copper-oxide-based photoelectrode for visible-light-driven hydrogen generation using a facile, low-cost, and scalable approach of combining electrodeposition and hydrothermal synthesis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.131-132
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• 2007

An AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor(HEMT) was fabricated and the effect of photoelectrochemical oxidation of AlGaN/GaN surface was investigated. The oxidation of AlGaN surface was done in water at the bias of 10 V under the deep UV light illumination. The sheet resistance of the AlGaN/GaN structure was increased and gate leakage current of the HEMT was decreased by the oxidation. However, the transconductance of the HEMT was not degraded by the oxidation.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.239-245
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• 2020

Synthesizing one-dimensional nanostructures of oxide semiconductors is a promising approach to fabricate highefficiency photoelectrodes for hydrogen production from photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. In this work, vertically aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorod arrays are successfully synthesized on fluorine-doped-tin-oxide (FTO) coated glass substrate via seed-mediated hydrothermal synthesis method with the use of a ZnO nanoparticle seed layer, which is formed by thermally oxidizing a sputtered Zn metal thin film. The structural, optical and PEC properties of the ZnO nanorod arrays synthesized at varying levels of Zn sputtering power are examined to reveal that the optimum ZnO nanorod array can be obtained at a sputtering power of 20 W. The photocurrent density and the optimal photocurrent conversion efficiency obtained for the optimum ZnO nanorod array photoanode are 0.13 mA/㎠ and 0.49 %, respectively, at a potential of 0.85 V vs. RHE. These results provide a promising avenue to fabricating earth-abundant ZnO-based photoanodes for PEC water oxidation using facile hydrothermal synthesis.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.39-45
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• 2020

The Cu/Cu2O/CuO photoelectrode has been successfully fabricated by Rapid Thermal Annealing technique. The structural characterization of fabricated photoelectrode was performed using X-Ray diffraction, while elemental composition of the prepared material has been checked with X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. The synthesis parameters are optimized on the basis of photoelectrochemical performance. The best photoelectrochemical performance has been observed for the Cu/Cu2O/CuO photoelectrode fabricated at 550 ℃ oxidation temperature and oxidation time of 50 seconds with highest photocurrent density of -3 mA/㎠ at -0.13 V vs. RHE.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.70-70
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• 2013

As the costs of carbon-footprinetd fuels grow continuously and simultaneously atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increases, solar fuels are receiving growing attention as alternative clean energy carriers. These fuels include molecular hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide produced from water, and hydrocarbons converted from carbon dioxide. For high efficiency solar fuel production, not only light absorbers (oxide semiconductors, Si, inorganic complexes, etc) should absorb most sunlight, but also charge separation and interfacial charge transfers need to occur efficiently. With this in mind, this talk will introduce the fundamentals of solar fuel production and artificial photosynthesis, and then discuss in detail on photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting and CO2 conversion. This talk largely divides into two section: PEC water oxidation and PEC CO2 reduction. The former is very important for proton-coupled electron transfer to CO2. For this oxidation, a variety of oxide semiconductors have been tested including TiO2, ZnO, WO3, BiVO4, and Fe2O3. Although they are essentially capable of oxidizing water into molecular oxygen, the efficiency is very low primarily because of high overpotentials and slow kinetics. This challenge has been overcome by coupling with oxygen evolving catalysts (OECs) and/or doping donor elements. In the latter, surface-modified p-Si electrodes are fabricated to absorb visible light and catalyze the CO2 reduction. For modification, metal nanoparticles are electrodeposited on the p-Si and their PEC performance is compared.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.30 no.9
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• pp.441-446
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• 2020

Synthesizing nanostructured thin films of oxide semiconductors is a promising approach to fabricate highly efficient photoelectrodes for hydrogen production via photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. In this work, we investigate the feasibility as an efficient photoanode for PEC water oxidation of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructured thin films synthesized via a simple method combined with sputtering Zn metallic films on a fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass substrate and subsequent thermal oxidation of the sputtered Zn metallic films in dry air. Characterization of the structural, optical, and PEC properties of the ZnO nanostructured thin film synthesized at varying Zn sputtering powers reveals that we can obtain an optimum ZnO nanostructured thin film as PEC photoanode at a sputtering power of 40 W. The photocurrent density and optimal photocurrent conversion efficiency for the optimum ZnO nanostructured thin film photoanode are found to be 0.1 mA/㎠ and 0.51 %, respectively, at a potential of 0.72 V vs. RHE. Our results illustrate that the ZnO nanostructured thin film has promising potential as an efficient photoanode for PEC water splitting.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.13-20
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• 2021

GaN has shown good potential owing to its better chemical stability than other materials and tunable bandgap with materials such as InN and AlN. Tunable bandgap allows GaN to make the maximum utilization of the solar spectrum, thus improves the solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency. In addition, GaN band gap contains the oxidation and reduction level of water, so it can split water without external voltage. However, STH efficiency using GaN itself is low and has been actively studied recently to improve it. In this thesis, we have summarized the studies related to the use of GaN as a photoelectrode for photoelectrochemical water splitting.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 1990

Pure titanium rods were oxidized by anodic oxidation, furnace oxidation and flame oxidation and used as a electrode in the photodecomposition of water. The maximum photoelectrochemical conversion efficiency(${\eta}$) was found for flame oxidized electrode ($1200^{\circ}C$ for 2 min in air), 0.8 %. Anodically oxidized electrodes have minimum photoelectrochemical conversion efficiencies, 0.3 %. Furnace oxidized electrode ($800^{\circ}C$ for 10min in air) has 0.5% phtoelectrochemical efficiency and shows a band-gap energy of about 2.9eV. The efficiency shows a parallelism with the presence of the metallic interstitial compound $TiO_{O+X}$(X < 0.33) at the metal-semiconductor interface, the thickness of the sub oxide layer and that of the external rutile scale.

• Rapid Communication in Photoscience
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.35-37
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• 2014

PEC (photoelectrochemical) water splitting for $O_2/H_2$ production is one of the promising but difficult way to utilize solar energy. Among photocatalytic materials for PEC water oxidation, $BiVO_4$ (Eg = 2.4 eV) has been recently intensively studied since it has various advantageous properties. But its maximum efficiency has not been realized owing to kinetic factors - slow water oxidation at surface & insufficient stability. These problems can be simultaneously solved by application of oxygen evolution catalyst (OEC) such as $CoO_x$, Co-Pi, $IrO_x$ etc. Herein we report the first successful application of $NiFeO_x$ OEC on $BiVO_4$, showing good performance compared to other effective OEC applied on $BiVO_4$ under basic conditions. The enhanced activity of OEC loaded $BiVO_4$ has been supported by the surface charge separation efficiency and electrochemical impedance studies.