• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.27-27
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• 2011

For the design of real applicable molecular devices, current-voltage properties through molecular nanostructures such as metal-molecule-metal junctions (molecular junctions) have been studied extensively. In thiolate monolayers on the gold electrode, the chemical bonding of sulfur to gold and the van der Waals interactions between the alkyl chains of neighboring molecules are important factors in the formation of well-defined monolayers and in the control of the electron transport rate. Charge transport through the molecular junctions depends significantly on the energy levels of molecules relative to the Fermi levels of the contacts and the electronic structure of the molecule. It is important to understand the interfacial electron transport in accordance with the increased film thickness of alkyl chains that are known as an insulating layer, but are required for molecular device fabrication. Thiol-tethered RuII terpyridine complexes were synthesized for a voltage-driven molecular switch and used to understand the switch-on mechanism of the molecular switches of single metal complexes in the solid-state molecular junction in a vacuum. Electrochemical voltammetry and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics are measured to elucidate electron transport processes in the bistable conducting states of single molecular junctions of a molecular switch, Ru(II) terpyridine complexes. (1) On the basis of the Ru-centered electrochemical reaction data, the electron transport rate increases in the mixed self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of Ru(II) terpyridine complexes, indicating strong electronic coupling between the redox center and the substrate, along the molecules. (2) In a low-conducting state before switch-on, I-V characteristics are fitted to a direct tunneling model, and the estimated tunneling decay constant across the Ru(II) terpyridine complex is found to be smaller than that of alkanethiol. (3) The threshold voltages for the switch-on from low- to high-conducting states are identical, corresponding to the electron affinity of the molecules. (4) A high-conducting state after switch-on remains in the reverse voltage sweep, and a linear relationship of the current to the voltage is obtained. These results reveal electron transport paths via the redox centers of the Ru(II) terpyridine complexes, a molecular switch.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.896-899
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• 1999

A carbon dioxide gas sensor was studied as a function of temperature and $CO_2$concentration in the Li$_2$ZrO$_3$ system. Lithium zirconate(Li$_2$ZrO$_3$) was synthesized by the heat-treatment of zirconia(ZrO$_2$)and Lithium carbonate(Li$_2$CO$_3$). The specimens were prepared both as bulk disk, 10mm in diameter and 1.0mm thickness, and thick films on an alumina substrate. Lithium zirconate readily responded to $CO_2$concentration from 0.1% to 100% in the range of 45$0^{\circ}C$ to $650^{\circ}C$. The sensitivity to $CO_2$ was dependent on the measuring temperature. Lithium zirconate(Li$_2$ZrO$_3$) decomposes into Li$_2$CO$_3$ and ZrO$_2$after the reaction with $CO_2$in the range of 45$0^{\circ}C$ to $650^{\circ}C$. Li$_2$CO$_3$ changes into Li$_2$O and $CO_2$ above $650^{\circ}C$. The material showed difficulty with reversibility and recovery. The optimum temperature for the highest sensitivity is around 55$0^{\circ}C$.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.347-351
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• 2003

II-Ⅵ ZnO compound semiconductor thin films were grown on $\alpha$-Al$_2$O$_3$(0001) single crystal substrate by radical beam assisted molecular beam epitaxy and the optical properties were investigated. Zn(6N) was evaporated using Knudsen cell and O radical was assisted at the partial pressure of 1$\times$10$^{4}$ Torr and radical beam source of 250-450 W RF power. In $\theta$-2$\theta$ x-ray diffraction analysis, ZnO thin film with 500 nm thickness showed only ZnO(0002)and ZnO(0004) peaks is believed to be well grown along c-axis orientation. Photoluminescence (PL) measurement using He-Cd ($\lambda$=325 nm) laser is obtained in the temperature range of 9 K-300 K. At 9 K and 300 K, only near band edge (NBE) is observed and the FWHM's of PL peak of the ZnO deposited at 450 RF power are 45 meV and 145 meV respectively. From no observation of any weak deep level peak even at room temperature PL, the ZnO grains are regarded to contain very low defect density and impurity to cause the deep-level defects. The peak position of free exciton showed slightly red-shift as temperature was increased, and from this result the binding energy of free exciton can be experimentally determined as much as $58\pm$0.5 meV, which is very closed to that of ZnO bulk. By van der Pauw 4-point probe measurement, the grown ZnO is proved to be n-type with the electron concentration($n_{e}$ ) $1.69$\times$10^{18}$$cm^3$, mobility($\mu$) $-12.3\textrm{cm}^2$/Vㆍs, and resistivity($\rho$) 0.30 $\Omega$$\cdot$cm.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.295-303
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• 2001

White emission thin film electroluminecent device was fabricated with ZnS for phosphor layers and BST ferroelectric thin film for insulating layers. The ZnS:Mn and $ZnS:SmF_3$ layers were used for emission of red color. Also the $ZnS:TbF_3$ and $ZnS:AgF_3$ layers were used to emission of green and blue color, respectively. And the fabrication conditions of the BST insulating layers were followings, that is, the composition ratio of target, substrate temperature, working pressure and operating gas ratio were $Ba_{0.5}Sr_{0.5}Ti_{0.3}$, $400^{\circ}C$, 30 mTorr and 9:1, respectively. The thickness of phosphor were 150 nm for each layers and the insulating layers of upper and bottom were 400 nm and 200 nm, respectively. The luminesence threshold voltage was $75\;V_{rms}$ and the maximum brightness of the thin film electroluminecent device was $3200\;cd/m^2$ at $100\;V_{rms}$.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.471-475
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• 2006

$VO_x$ thin films with the thickness of 450 nm were prepared on a $Pt/Ti/SiO_{2}/Si$ substrate at room temperature by a reactive radio frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering method. The deposition rates of $VO_x$ thin films were investigated as a function of $O_{2}$ concentration and rf power. As the $O_{2}$ concentration in a $O_{2}/Ar$ mixture increased, the deposition rate decreased. However, the deposition rate increased with increasing rf power. The deposited $VO_x$ thin films were annealed at $450^{\circ}C$ for 2, 4, and 6 h in $O_{2}$ and $N_{2}$ ambient. After annealing, the phase changes of $VO_x$ thin films were investigated using X-ray diffraction analysis. The plane and cross-sectional views of $VO_x$ thin films before and after annealing were observed by field emission scanning electron microscopy. The metal-insulator transition (MIT) properties of $VO_x$ thin films were measured using current-voltage measurement. The excellent MIT properties were observed in $VO_x$ thin films annealed in $O_{2}$ ambient.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.27-36
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• 2006

We fabricated thermally evaporated 10 nm-Ni/(poly)Si, 10 nm-Ni/l nm-Ir/(poly)Si and 10 nm-Ni/l nm-Pt/(poly)Si films to investigate the thermal stability of nickel monosilicides at the elevated temperatures by rapid annealing them at the temperatures of $300{\sim}1200^{\circ}C$ for 40 seconds. Silicides of 50 nm-thick were formed on top of both the single crystal silicon actives and the polycrystalline silicon gates. A four-point tester was used to examine sheet resistance. A scanning electron microscope and field ion beam were employed for thickness and microstructure evolution characterization. An X-ray diffractometer and an Auger depth profiler were used for phase and composition analysis, respectively. Nickel silicides with platinum have no effect on widening the NiSi stabilization temperature region. Nickel silicides with iridium farmed on single crystal silicon showed a low resistance up to $1200^{\circ}C$ while the ones formed on polycrystalline silicon substrate showed low resistance up to $850^{\circ}C$. The grain boundary diffusion and agglomeration of silicides lowered the NiSi stable temperature with polycrystalline silicon substrates. Our result implies that our newly proposed Ir added NiSi process may widen the thermal process window for nano CMOS process.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.155-160
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• 2013

ZnO thin films co-doped with Mg and Ga (MxGyZzO, x + y + z = 1, x = 0.05, y = 0.02 and z = 0.93) were prepared on glass substrates by RF magnetron sputtering with different sputtering powers ranging from 100W to 200W at a substrate temperature of $350^{\circ}C$. The effects of the sputtering power on the structural, morphological, electrical, and optical properties of MGZO thin films were investigated. The X-ray diffraction patterns showed that all the MGZO thin films were grown as a hexagonal wurtzite phase with the preferred orientation on the c-axis without secondary phases such as MgO, $Ga_2O_3$, or $ZnGa_2O_4$. The intensity of the diffraction peak from the (0002) plane of the MGZO thin films was enhanced as the sputtering power increased. The (0002) peak positions of the MGZO thin films was shifted toward, a high diffraction angle as the sputtering power increased. Cross-sectional field emission scanning electron microscopy images of the MGZO thin films showed that all of these films had a columnar structure and their thickness increased with an increase in the sputtering power. MGZO thin film deposited at the sputtering power of 200W showed the best electrical characteristics in terms of the carrier concentration ($4.71{\times}10^{20}cm^{-3}$), charge carrier mobility ($10.2cm^2V^{-1}s^{-1}$) and a minimum resistivity ($1.3{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}cm$). A UV-visible spectroscopy assessment showed that the MGZO thin films had high transmittance of more than 80 % in the visible region and that the absorption edges of MGZO thin films were very sharp and shifted toward the higher wavelength side, from 270 nm to 340 nm, with an increase in the sputtering power. The band-gap energy of MGZO thin films was widened from 3.74 eV to 3.92 eV with the change in the sputtering power.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.293-294
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• 2011

It is known that semiconductor quantum-dot (QD) heterostructures have superior zero-dimensional quantum confinement, and they have been successfully applied to semiconductor laser diodes (QDLDs) for optical communication and infrared photodetectors (QDIPs) for thermal images [1]. The self-assembled QDs are normally formed at Stranski-Krastanov (S-K) growth mode utilizing the accumulated strain due to lattice-mismatch existing at heterointerfaces between QDs and cap layers. In order to increase the areal density and the number of stacks of QDs, recently, sub-monolayer (SML)-thick QDs (SQDs) with reduced strain were tried by equivalent thicknesses thinner than a wetting layer (WL) existing in conventional QDs (CQDs) by S-K mode. Despite that it is very different from CQDs with a well-defined WL, the SQD structure has been successfully applied to QDIP[2]. In this study, optical characteristics are investigated by using photoluminescence (PL) spectra taken from self-assembled InAs/GaAs QDs whose coverage are changing from submonolayer to a few monolayers. The QD structures were grown by using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on semi-insulating GaAs (100) substrates, and formed at a substrate temperature of 480$^{\circ}C$ followed by covering GaAs cap layer at 590$^{\circ}C$. We prepared six 10-period-stacked QD samples with different InAs coverages and thicknesses of GaAs spacer layers. In the QD coverage below WL thickness (~1.7 ML), the majority of SQDs with no WL coexisted with a small amount of CQDs with a WL, and multi-peak spectra changed to a single peak profile. A transition from SQDs to CQDs was found before and after a WL formation, and the sublevel of SQDs peaking at (1.32${\pm}$0.1) eV was much closer to the GaAs bandedge than that of CQDs (~1.2 eV). These revealed that QDs with no WL could be formed by near-ML coverage in InAs/GaAs system, and single-mode SQDs could be achieved by 1.5 ML just below WL that a strain field was entirely uniform.

• Composites Research
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.183-189
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• 2014

Experimental considerations have been performed to obtain the clear optical microscopic images of graphene oxide which are useful to probe its quality and morphological information such as a shape, a size, and a thickness. In this study, we investigated the contrast enhancement of the optical images of graphene oxide after hydrazine vapor reduction on a Si substrate coated with a 300 nm-thick $SiO_2$ dielectric layer. Also, a green-filtered light source gave higher contrast images comparing to optical images under standard white light. Furthermore, it was found that a image channel separation technique can be an alternative to simply identify the morphological information of graphene oxide, where red, green, and blue color values are separated at each pixels of the optical image. The approaches performed in this study can be helpful to set up a simple and easy protocol for the morphological identification of graphene oxide using a conventional optical microscope instead of a scanning electron microscopy or an atomic force microscopy.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1343-1351
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• 2010

In this paper, a novel patch antenna based on the metamaterial CRLH(Composite Right- and Left-Handed) structure is designed, implemented, and measured. Contrary to the standard microstrip patch's fundamental resonance mode of half-wavelength or its positive multiple, the proposed antenna shows the in-phase electric field over the entire antenna. The proposed antenna has a desired omni-directional field pattern which is typical characteristic of $\lambda/4$ monopole antenna, and also shows the merit of low profile. HFSS(High Frequency Structure Simulator) of Ansoft which is based on the FEM(Finite Element Method) is used to simulate the proposed antenna. FR-4 substrate of thickness 1.6 mm and relative permitivity 4.4 is used for the proposed antenna implementation. The implemented antenna showed VSWR (Voltage Standarding Wave Ratio)$\leq$2 for the frequency band from 2.63 GHz to 2.655 GHz which is used for S-DMB (Satellite-Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) service. And measured peak gain and efficiency are 2.65 dBi and 81.14 %, respectively.