• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-4
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• 2019

Reactive sputtering is widely used because of its high deposition rate and high step coverage. The deposition layer is often affected by target poisoning because the target conditions are changed, as well, by reactive gases during the initial stage of sputtering process. The reactive gas affects the deposition rate and process stability (target poisoning), and it also leads unintended oxide interlayer formation. Although the target poisoning mechanism has been well known, little attention has been paid on understanding the interlayer formation during the reactive sputtering. In this research, we studied the interlayer formation during the reactive sputtering. A DC magnetron sputtering process is carried out to deposit an aluminum oxide film on a silicon wafer. From the real-time process monitoring and material analysis, the target poisoning phenomena changes the reactive gas balance at the initial stage, and affects the interlayer formation during the reactive sputtering process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.273.2-273.2
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• 2014

Sputtering process has been widely used in Si-based semiconductor industry and it is also an ideal method to deposit transparent oxide materials for thin-film transistors (TFTs). The oxide films grown at low temperature by conventional RF sputtering process are typically amorphous state with low density including a large number of defects such as dangling bonds and oxygen vacancies. Those play a crucial role in the electron conduction in transparent electrode, while those are the origin of instability of semiconducting channel in oxide TFTs due to electron trapping. Therefore, post treatments such as high temperature annealing process have been commonly progressed to obtain high reliability and good stability. In this work, the scheme of electron-assisted RF sputtering process for high quality transparent oxide films was suggested. Through the additional electron supply into the plasma during sputtering process, the working pressure could be kept below $5{\times}10-4Torr$. Therefore, both the mean free path and the mobility of sputtered atoms were increased and the well ordered and the highly dense microstructure could be obtained compared to those of conventional sputtering condition. In this work, the physical properties of transparent oxide films such as conducting indium tin oxide and semiconducting indium gallium zinc oxide films grown by electron-assisted sputtering process will be discussed in detail. Those films showed the high conductivity and the high mobility without additional post annealing process. In addition, oxide TFT characteristics based on IGZO channel and ITO electrode will be shown.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.217-217
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• 2016

The amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) is widely accepted as a promising channel material for thin-film transistor (TFT) applications owing to their outstanding electrical properties [1, 2]. However, a-IGZO TFTs have still suffered from their bias instability with illumination [1-4]. Up to now, many researchers have studied the sub-gap density of states (DOS) as the root cause of instability. It is well known that defect states can influence on the performances and stabilities of a-IGZO TFTs. The defects states should be closely related with the deposition condition, including sputtering power, and pressure. Nevertheless, it has not been reported how these defects are created during conventional RF magnetron sputtering. In general, during conventional RF magnetron sputtering process, negative oxygen ions (NOIs) can be generated by electron attachment in oxygen atom near target surface and then accelerated up to few hundreds eV by a self-bias; at this time, the high energy bombardment of NOIs induce defects in oxide thin films. Recently, we have reported that the properties of IGZO thin films are strongly related with effects of NOIs which are generated during the sputtering process [5]. From our previous results, the electrical characteristics and the chemical bonding states of a-IGZO thin films were depended with the bombardment energy of NOIs. And also, we suggest that the deep sub-gap states in a-IGZO as well as thin film properties would be influenced by the bombardment of high energetic NOIs during the sputtering process.In this study, we will introduce our novel technology named as Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) process to prevent the NOIs bombardment effects and present how much to be improved the properties of a-IGZO thin film by this new deposition method. We deposited a-IGZO thin films by MFSS on SiO2/p-Si and glass substrate at various process conditions, after which we investigated the morphology, optical and electrical properties of the a-IGZO thin films.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.259-259
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• 2008

The LTCC (Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic) technology meets the requirements for high quality microelectronic devices and microsystems application due to a very good electrical and mechanical properties, high reliability and stability as well as possibility of making integrated three dimensional microstructures. The wet process, which has been applied to the etching of the metallic thin film on the ceramic substrate, has multi process steps such as lithography and development and uses very toxic chemicals arising the environmental problems. The other side, Plasma technology like ion beam sputtering is clean process including surface cleaning and treatment, sputtering and etching of semiconductor devices, and environmental cleanup. In this study, metallic multilayer pattern was fabricated by the ion beam etching of Ti/Pd/Cu without the lithography. In the experiment, Alumina and LTCC were used as the substrate and Ti/Pd/Cu metallic multilayer was deposited by the DC-magnetron sputtering system. After the formation of Cu/Ni/Au multilayer pattern made by the photolithography and electroplating process, the Ti/Pd/Cu multilayer was dry-etched by using the low energy-high current ion-beam etching process. Because the electroplated Au layer was the masking barrier of the etching of Ti/Pd/Cu multilayer, the additional lithography was not necessary for the etching process. Xenon ion beam which having the high sputtering yield was irradiated and was used with various ion energy and current. The metallic pattern after the etching was optically examined and analyzed. The rate and phenomenon of the etching on each metallic layer were investigated with the diverse process condition such as ion-beam acceleration energy, current density, and etching time.

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.268-275
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• 2006

In this study, effect of sputtering on the plasma-nitriding substrate and before PVD coating on the microstucture, microhardness, surface roughness and the adhesion strength of CrZrN thin films were investigated. Experimental results showed that this sputtering process not only removed surface compound layer which formed during a plasma nitriding process but also induced an alteration of the surface of plasma nitrided substrate in terms of microhardness distribution, surface roughness. This in turn affected the adhesion strength of PVD coatings. After sputtering, microhardness distribution showed general decrease and the surface roughness became increased slightly. The critical shear stress measured from the scratch test on the CrZrN coatings showed an approximately 1.4 times increase in the adhesion strength through the sputtering prior to the coating and this could be attributed to a complete removal of compound layer from the plasma nitrided surface and to an increase in the surface roughness after sputtering.

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2006

In this study, effect of sputtering after plasma nitriding and before PVD coating on the microstucture, microhardness, surface roughness and the adhesion strength of CrN thin films were investigated. Experimental results showed that this sputtering process not only removed surface compound layer which formed during a plasma nitriding process but also induced an alteration of the surface of plasma nitrided substrate in terms of microhardness distribution and surface roughness, which in turn affected the adhesion strength of PVD coatings. After sputtering, microhardness distribution showed general decrease and the surface roughness became increased slightly. The critical shear stress measured from the scratch test on the CrN coatings showed an approximately twice increase in the binding strength through the sputtering prior to the coating and this could be attributed to a complete removal of compound layer from the plasma nitrided surface and to an increase in the surface roughness after sputtering.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.465-465
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• 2012

In this study, we developed an Al2O3 nanolaminated single gas barrier layer using a Neutral Beam Assisted Sputtering (NBAS) process. The NBAS process can continuously change crystalline structures from an amorphous phase to a nanocrystal phase with various grain sizes and lead to the formation of a nanolaminated structure in the single inorganic thin film. As a result, the water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) of the nanolaminated Al2O3 thin films by NBAS process have improved more than 40% compared with that of conventional Al2O3 layers by the RF magnetron sputtering process under the same sputtering conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.71-75
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• 2006

The application of focused ion beam (FIB) technology in micro/nano machining has become increasingly popular. Its usage in micro/nano machining has advantages over contemporary photolithography or other micro/nano machining technologies such as small feature resolution, the ability to process without masks and being accommodating for a variety of materials and geometries. The target of this paper is the analysis of FIB sputtering process according to tilt angle, dwell time and overlap for application of 3D micro and pattern fabrication and to find the effective beam scanning conditions using Taguchi method. Therefore we make the conclusions that tilt angle is dominant parameter for sputtering yield. Burr size is reduced as tilt angle is higher.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.288-289
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• 2011

Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is a typical highly Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) currently used as a transparent electrode material. Most widely used deposition method is the sputtering process for ITO film deposition because it has a high deposition rate, allows accurate control of the film thickness and easy deposition process and high electrical/optical properties. However, to apply high quality ITO thin film in a flexible microelectronic device using a plastic substrate, conventional DC magnetron sputtering (DMS) processed ITO thin film is not suitable because it needs a high temperature thermal annealing process to obtain high optical transmittance and low resistivity, while the generally plastic substrates has low glass transition temperatures. In the room temperature sputtering process, the electrical property degradation of ITO thin film is caused by negative oxygen ions effect. This high energy negative oxygen ions(about over 100eV) can be critical physical bombardment damages against the formation of the ITO thin film, and this damage does not recover in the room temperature process that does not offer thermal annealing. Hence new ITO deposition process that can provide the high electrical/optical properties of the ITO film at room temperature is needed. To solve these limitations we develop the Magnetic Field Shielded Sputtering (MFSS) system. The MFSS is based on DMS and it has the plasma limiter, which compose the permanent magnet array (Fig.1). During the ITO thin film deposition in the MFSS process, the electrons in the plasma are trapped by the magnetic field at the plasma limiters. The plasma limiter, which has a negative potential in the MFSS process, prevents to the damage by negative oxygen ions bombardment, and increases the heat(-) up effect by the Ar ions in the bulk plasma. Fig. 2. shows the electrical properties of the MFSS ITO thin film and DMS ITO thin film at room temperature. With the increase of the sputtering pressure, the resistivity of DMS ITO increases. On the other hand, the resistivity of the MFSS ITO slightly increases and becomes lower than that of the DMS ITO at all sputtering pressures. The lowest resistivity of the DMS ITO is $1.0{\times}10-3{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ and that of the MFSS ITO is $4.5{\times}10-4{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. This resistivity difference is caused by the carrier mobility. The carrier mobility of the MFSS ITO is 40 $cm^2/V{\cdot}s$, which is significantly higher than that of the DMS ITO (10 $cm^2/V{\cdot}s$). The low resistivity and high carrier mobility of the MFSS ITO are due to the magnetic field shielded effect. In addition, although not shown in this paper, the roughness of the MFSS ITO thin film is lower than that of the DMS ITO thin film, and TEM, XRD and XPS analysis of the MFSS ITO show the nano-crystalline structure. As a result, the MFSS process can effectively prevent to the high energy negative oxygen ions bombardment and supply activation energies by accelerating Ar ions in the plasma; therefore, high quality ITO can be deposited at room temperature.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.83-84
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• 2009

Thin film solar cells based on CIGS continue to be a leading candidate for thin film photovoltaic devices due to their appropriate bandgap, long-term stability, and low-cost production. To date, the most successful technique for the deposition of a CIGS absorber layer has been based on the co-evaporation However, the evaporation process is difficult to scale-up for large-area manufacturing the sputtering and Selenizaton process has been a promising method for low-cost and large-scale production of high quality CIGS In this study, we have used Cu and CuIn alloy targets for precursor deposition the precursor deposited by sputtering Cu and CuIn targets and $CuInSe_2$ thin film is manufactured by Selenization process