• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.125.2-125.2
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• 2016

Semiconductor nanowires are essential building blocks for various nanotechnologies including energy conversion, optoelectronics, and thermoelectric devices. Bottom-up synthetic approach utilizing metal catalyst and vapor phase precursor molecules (i.e., vapor - liquid - solid (VLS) method) is widely employed to grow semiconductor nanowires. Al has received attention as growth catalyst since it is free from contamination issue of Si nanowire leading to the deterioration of electrical properties. Al-catalyzed Si nanowire growth, however, unlike Au-Si system, has relatively narrow window for stable growth, showing highly tapered sidewall structure at high temperature condition. Although surface chemistry is generally known for its role on the crystal growth, it is still unclear how surface adsorbates such as hydrogen atoms and the nanowire sidewall morphology interrelate in VLS growth. Here, we use real-time in situ infrared spectroscopy to confirm the presence of surface hydrogen atoms chemisorbed on Si nanowire sidewalls grown from Al catalyst and demonstrate they are necessary to prevent unwanted tapering of nanowire. We analyze the surface coverage of hydrogen atoms quantitatively via comparison of Si-H vibration modes measured during growth with those obtained from postgrowth measurement. Our findings suggest that the surface adsorbed hydrogen plays a critical role in preventing nanowire sidewall tapering and provide new insights for the role of surface chemistry in VLS growth.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.203-203
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• 2015

Gallium Oxide (Ga2O3) has been widely investigated for the optoelectronic applications due to its wide bandgap and the optical transparency. Recently, with the development of fabrication techniques in nanometer scale semiconductor materials, there have been an increasing number of extensive reports on the synthesis and characterization of Ga2O3 nano-structures such as nano-wires, nano-belts, and nano-dots. In contrast to typical vapor-liquid-solid growth mode with metal catalysts to synthesis 1-dimensional nano-wires, there are several difficulties in fabricating the nano-structures by using sputtering techniques. This is attributed to the fact that relatively low growth temperatures and higher growth rate compared with chemical vapor deposition method. In this study, Ga2O3 nanowires (NWs) were synthesized by using radio-frequency magnetron sputtering method. The NWs were then coated by Au thin films and annealed under Ar or N2 gas enviroment with no supply of Gallium and Oxygen source. Several samples were prepared with varying the post annealing parameters such as gas environment annealing time, annealing temperature. Samples were characterized by using XRD, SEM, and PL measurements. In this presentation, the details of fabrication process and physical properties of branched Ga2O3 NWs will be reported.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.421.1-421.1
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• 2014

Top-down processes based on photolithography technology have been developed by using light sources with short wavelength, however, the processes are expected to meet their limits in higher integration of semiconductor integrated circuits. To overcome the limits, researches on bottom-up processes have been proceeded. One of those, fabrication of nanodevices by using nanoparticles has been on research. But it is difficult to align nanoparticles at appropriate positions. To resolve this, studies has been proceeded to form nanowires by bonding DNA molecules which have self-assembly property and positive-charged functionalized gold nanoparticles. There are negative-charged phosphates in backbones of DNA molecules. By using the attractive force between the negative charge of the phosphates and the positive charge of gold nanoparticles, the Au-DNA nanowires are made. However, bonding Au nanoparticles only on DNA molecules, not other nanoparticles, is to be solved. So we studied to resolve this problem. In the formation of Au nanoparticles, we changed the charge of Au nanoparticles by adding HCl to control pH of the functionalized nanoparticles, measured zeta potential. Then we bonded the nanoparticles and DNA molecules and made observation by using FE-SEM and AFM.

• Applied Science and Convergence Technology
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.134-138
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• 2014

One-dimensional nanostructures such as nanowires have been extensively investigated as a promising type of material for applications of nanoscale technology. The fabrication of single-nanowire devices are consequently important and interesting. This study introduced a feasible method for growing CuO nanowires on Cu foils. The nanowires had diameters of 10~150 nm and lengths of more than $7{\mu}m$ and were grown by means of thermal oxidation in a vacuum. They were entirely and uniformly grown over the Cu foil surfaces and could be extracted and dispersed in an ethanol solution for further purposes. In addition, a simple fabrication method for realizing device functionality from a single CuO nanowire was reported. Fabricated devices were carefully checked by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The probability of the realization of a single-CuO-nanowire device relative to that of all other types was estimated to be around 25%. Finally, the I-V characteristics of the devices were analyzed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.410.1-410.1
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• 2014

A soft-lithographic top-down approach is combined with an epitaxial layer transfer process to fabricate high quality III-V compound semiconductor nanowires (NWs) and integrate them on Si/SiO2 substrates, using MBE-grown ultrathin InAs as a source wafer. The channel width of the InAs nanowires is controlled by using solvent-assisted nanoscale embossing (SANE), descumming, and etching processes. By optimizing these processes, the NW width is scaled to less than 50 nm, and the InAs NWFETs has ${\sim}1,600cm^2/Vs$ peak electron mobility, which indicates no mobility degradation due to the size.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.1051-1054
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• 2009

This paper investigates approaches for improving effective mobility of organic thin film transistors (OTFTs). We consider gate dielectric optimization, whereby we demonstrated >2x increase in mobility by using a silicon-rich silicon nitride ($SiN_x$) gate dielectric for polythiophene-based (PQT) OTFTs. We also engineer the dielectric-semiconductor ($SiN_x$-PQT) interface to attain a 27x increase in mobility (up to 0.22 $cm^2$/V-s) using an optimized combination of oxygen plasma and OTS SAM treatments. Augmentative material systems by combining 1-D nanomaterials (e.g., carbon nanotubes, zinc oxide nanowires) in an organic matrix for nanocomposite OTFTs provided a further boost in device performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.376-376
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• 2012

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) are future building block for nano-scale devices. Especially, Ge NWs are fascinated material due to the high electrical conductivity with high carrier mobility. It is strong candidate material for post-CMOS technology. However, thermal stability of Ge NWs are poor than conventional semiconductor material such as Si. Especially, when it reduced size as small as nano-scale it will be melted around CMOS process temperature due to the melting point depression. Recently, Graphene have been intensively interested since it has high carrier mobility with single atomic thickness. In addition, it is chemically very stable due to the $sp^2$ hybridization. Graphene films shows good protecting layer for oxidation resistance and corrosion resistance of metal surface using its chemical properties. Recently, we successfully demonstrated CVD growth of monolayer graphene using Ge catalyst. Using our growth method, we synthesized Ge/graphene core/shell (Ge@G) NW and conducted it for highly thermal stability required devices. We confirm the existence of graphene shell and morphology of NWs using SEM, TEM and Raman spectra. SEM and TEM images clearly show very thin graphene shell. We annealed NWs in vacuum at high temperature. Our results indicated that surface melting phenomena of Ge NWs due to the high surface energy from curvature of NWs start around $550^{\circ}C$ which is $270^{\circ}C$ lower than bulk melting point. When we increases annealing temperature, tip of Ge NWs start to make sphere shape in order to reduce its surface energy. On the contrary, Ge@G NWs prevent surface melting of Ge NWs and no Ge spheres generated. Furthermore, we fabricated filed emission devices using pure Ge NWs and Ge@G NWs. Compare with pure Ge NWs, graphene protected Ge NWs show enhancement of reliability. This growth approach serves a thermal stability enhancement of semiconductor NWs.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.993-994
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• 2008

Electrochromic (EC) devices are capable of reversibly changing their optical properties upon charge injection and extraction induced by the external voltage. The characteristics of the EC device, such as low power consumption, high coloration efficiency, and memory effects under open circuit status, make them suitable for use in a variety of applications including smart windows and electronic papers. Coloration due to reduction or oxidation of redox chromophores can be used for EC devices (e-paper), but the switching time is slow (second level). Recently, with increasing demand for the low cost, lightweight flat panel display with paper-like readability (electronic paper), an EC display technology based on dye-modified $TiO_2$ nanoparticle electrode was developed. A well known organic dye molecule, viologen, was adsorbed on the surface of a mesoporous $TiO_2$ nanoparticle film to form the EC electrode. On the other hand, ZnO is a wide bandgap II-VI semiconductor which has been applied in many fields such as UV lasers, field effect transistors and transparent conductors. The bandgap of the bulk ZnO is about 3.37 eV, which is close to that of the $TiO_2$ (3.4 eV). As a traditional transparent conductor, ZnO has excellent electron transport properties, even in ZnO nanoparticle films. In the past few years, one-dimension (1D) nanostructures of ZnO have attracted extensive research interest. In particular, 1D ZnO nanowires renders much better electron transportation capability by providing a direct conduction path for electron transport and greatly reducing the number of grain boundaries. These unique advantages make ZnO nanowires a promising matrix electrode for EC dye molecule loading. ZnO nanowires grow vertically from the substrate and form a dense array (Fig. 1). The ZnO nanowires show regular hexagonal cross section and the average diameter of the ZnO nanowires is about 100 nm. The cross-section image of the ZnO nanowires array (Fig. 1) indicates that the length of the ZnO nanowires is about $6\;{\mu}m$. From one on/off cycle of the ZnO EC cell (Fig. 2). We can see that, the switching time of a ZnO nanowire electrode EC cell with an active area of $1\;{\times}\;1\;cm^2$ is 170 ms and 142 ms for coloration and bleaching, respectively. The coloration and bleaching time is faster compared to the $TiO_2$ mesoporous EC devices with both coloration and bleaching time of about 250 ms for a device with an active area of $2.5\;cm^2$. With further optimization, it is possible that the response time can reach ten(s) of millisecond, i.e. capable of displaying video. Fig. 3 shows a prototype with two different transmittance states. It can be seen that good contrast was obtained. The retention was at least a few hours for these prototypes. Being an oxide, ZnO is oxidation resistant, i.e. it is more durable for field emission cathode. ZnO nanotetropods were also applied to realize the first prototype triode field emission device, making use of scattered surface-conduction electrons for field emission (Fig. 4). The device has a high efficiency (field emitted electron to total electron ratio) of about 60%. With this high efficiency, we were able to fabricate some prototype displays (Fig. 5 showing some alphanumerical symbols). ZnO tetrapods have four legs, which guarantees that there is one leg always pointing upward, even using screen printing method to fabricate the cathode.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.440-440
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• 2012

Nanomaterials have emerged as new building blocks to construct light energy harvesting assemblies. Size dependent properties provide the basis for developing new and effective systems with semiconductor nanoparticles, quantized charging effects in metal nanoparticle or their combinations in 2 and 3 dimensions for expanding the possibility of developing new strategies for photovoltaic system. As top-down approach, we developed a simple and effective method for the large scale formation of self-assembled Cu(In,Ga)$Se_2$ (CIGS) nanostructures by ion beam irradiation. The compositional changes and morphological evolution were observed as a function of the irradiation time. As the ion irradiation time increased, the nano-dots were transformed into a nano-ridge structure due to the difference in the sputtering yields and diffusion rates of each element and the competition between sputtering and diffusion processes during irradiation. As bottom-up approach, we developed the growth of CIGS nanowires using thermal-chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Vapor-phase synthesis is probably the most extensively explored approach to the formation of 1D nanostructures such as whiskers, nanorods, and nanowires. However, unlike binary or ternary chalcogenides, the synthesis of quaternary CIGS nanostructures is challenging because of the difficulty in controlling the stoichiometry and phase structure. We introduced a method for synthesis of the single crystalline CIGS nanowires in the form of chalcopyrite using thermal-CVD without catalyst. It was confirmed that the CIGS nanowires are epitaxially grown on a sapphire substrate, having a length ranged from 3 to 100 micrometers and a diameter from 30 to 500 nm.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.1519-1523
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• 2002

A procedure for preparing semiconductor/metal nanowire arrays is described, based on a template method which entails electrochemical deposition into nanometer-wide parallel pores of anodic aluminum oxide films on aluminum. Aligned CdS/Co heterostructured nanowires have been prepared by ac electrodeposition in the anodic aluminum oxide templates. By varying the preparation conditions, a variety of CdS/Co nanowire arrays were fabricated, whose dimensional properties could be adjusted.