• Solar Energy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.3-11
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• 1997

Because grain boundaries in polycrystalline silicon act as potential barriers and recombination centers for the photo-generated charge carriers, these defects degrade conversion effiency of solar cell. To reduce these effects of grain boundaries, we investigated various influencing factors such as thermal treatment, various grid pattern, selective wet etching for grain boundaries, buried contact metallization along grain boundaries, grid on metallic thin film. Pretreatment above $900^{\circ}C$ in $N_2$ atmosphere, gettering by $POCl_3$ and Al treatment for back surface field contributed to obtain a high quality poly-Si. To prevent carrier losses at the grain boundaries, we carried out surface treatment using Schimmel etchant. This etchant delineated grain boundaries of $10{\mu}m$ depth as well as surface texturing effect. A metal AI diffusion into grain boundaries on rear side reduced back surface recombination effects at grain boundaries. A combination of fine grid with finger spacing of 0.4mm and buried electrode along grain boundaries improved short circuit current density of solar cell. A ultra-thin Chromium layer of 20nm with transmittance of 80% reduced series resistance. This paper focused on the grain boundary effect for terrestrial applications of solar cells with low cost, large area, and high efficiency.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2014

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are the state-of-the-art technology among electrochemical energy storage and conversion cells, and are still considered the most attractive class of battery in the future due to their high specific energy density, high efficiency, and long cycle life. Rapid development of power-hungry commercial electronics and large-scale energy storage applications (e.g. off-peak electrical energy storage), however, requires novel anode materials that have higher energy densities to replace conventional graphite electrodes. Germanium (Ge) and silicon (Si) are thought to be ideal prospect candidates for next generation LIB anodes due to their extremely high theoretical energy capacities. For instance, Ge offers relatively lower volume change during cycling, better Li insertion/extraction kinetics, and higher electronic conductivity than Si. In this focused review, we briefly describe the basic concepts of LIBs and then look at the characteristics of ideal anode materials that can provide greatly improved electrochemical performance, including high capacity, better cycling behavior, and rate capability. We then discuss how, in the future, Ge anode materials (Ge and Ge oxides, Ge-carbon composites, and other Ge-based composites) could increase the capacity of today's Li batteries. In recent years, considerable efforts have been made to fulfill the requirements of excellent anode materials, especially using these materials at the nanoscale. This article shall serve as a handy reference, as well as starting point, for future research related to high capacity LIB anodes, especially based on semiconductor Ge and Si.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1006-1011
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• 2018

This paper proposes a three level buck converter utilizing multi-bit flying capacitor voltage control. The conventional three-level buck converter can not control the flying capacitor voltage, so that the operation is unstable or the circuit for controlling the flying capacitor voltage can not be applied to the PWM mode. Also when the load current is increased, an error occurs in the inductor voltage. The proposed structure can control the flying capacitor voltage in PWM mode by using differential difference amplifier and common mode feedback circuit. In addition, this paper proposes a 3bit flying capacitor voltage control circuit to optimize the operation of the three level buck converter depending on the load current, and a triangular wave generation circuit using the schmitt trigger circuit. The proposed 3-level buck converter is designed in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process and has an input voltage range of 2.7V~3.6V and an output voltage range of 0.7V~2.4V. The operating frequency is 2MHz, the load current range is 30mA to 500mA, and the output voltage ripple is measured up to 32.5mV. The measurement results show a maximum power conversion efficiency of 85% at a load current of 130 mA.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.253-262
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• 2023

E-voting is a concept that includes actions such as kiosk voting at a designated place and internet voting at an unspecified place, and has emerged to alleviate the problem of consuming a lot of resources and costs when conducting offline voting. Using E-voting has many advantages over existing voting systems, such as increased efficiency in voting and ballot counting, reduced costs, increased voting rate, and reduced errors. However, centralized E-voting has not received attention in public elections and voting on corporate agendas because the results of voting cannot be trusted due to concerns about data forgery and modulation and hacking by others. In order to solve this problem, recently, by designing an E-voting system using blockchain, research has been actively conducted to supplement concepts lacking in existing E-voting, such as increasing the reliability of voting information and securing transparency. In this paper, we proposed an electronic voting system that introduced hybrid blockchain that uses public and private blockchains in convergence. A hybrid blockchain can solve the problem of slow transaction processing speed, expensive fee by using a private blockchain, and can supplement for the lack of transparency and data integrity of transactions through a public blockchain. In addition, the proposed system is implemented as BaaS to ensure the ease of type conversion and scalability of blockchain and to provide powerful computing power. BaaS is an abbreviation of Blockchain as a Service, which is one of the cloud computing technologies and means a service that provides a blockchain platform ans software through the internet. In this paper, in order to evaluate the feasibility, the proposed system and domestic and foreign electronic voting-related studies are compared and analyzed in terms of blockchain type, anonymity, verification process, smart contract, performance, and scalability.

• Clean Technology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.329-335
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• 2020

Methanol synthesized from renewable hydrogen and captured CO2 has recently attracted great interest as a sustainable energy carrier for large-scale renewable energy storage. In this study, molten carbonate fuel cell's performance was investigated with the direct conversion of methanol into syngas inside the anode chamber of the cell. The internal reforming of methanol may significantly improve system efficiency since the heat generated from the electrochemical reaction can be used directly for the endothermic reforming reaction. The porous Ni-10 wt%Cr anode was sufficient for the methanol steam reforming reaction under the fuel cell operating condition. The direct supply of methanol into the anode chamber resulted in somewhat lower cell performance, especially at high current density. Recycling of the product gas into the anode gas inlet significantly improved the cell performance. The analysis based on material balance revealed that, with increasing current density and gas recycling ratio, the methanol steam reforming reaction rate likewise increased. A methanol conversion more significant than 90% was achieved with gas recycling. The results showed the feasibility of electricity and syngas co-production using the molten carbonate fuel cell. Further research is needed to optimize the fuel cell operating conditions for simultaneous production of electricity and syngas, considering both material and energy balances in the fuel cell.