• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.267-271
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• 2009

Multicomponent transparent conducting oxide films were deposited on glass substrates at 150 by dual magnetron sputtering of AZO and ITO targets. In the case of mixing a limited amount of ITO (10W), resistivity of TCO films was significantly increased compared to the AZO film; from $3.5{\times}10^{-3}$ to $9.7{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$. Deterioration of the electrical conductivity is attributed to the decreases in carrier concentration and Hall mobility. Improvement of the conductivity could be obtained for the films prepared with ITO powers larger than 40 W. The lowest resistivity ($\rho$) of $7.3{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ was achieved when ITO power was 100 W. Effects of $H_2$ incorporation on the electrical and optical properties of AZO-ITO films were investigated in this work. Addition of small amount of hydrogen resulted in the increase of carrier concentration and the improvement of electrical conductivity. It is apparent that the roughness of AZO-ITO films decreases dramatically after the transition of microstructure from polycrystalline to amorphous phase, which gives practical advantages such as an excellent uniformity of surface and a high etching rate. AZO-ITO films grown at sputtering ambient with hydrogen gas are expected to be applicable to optoelectronic devices such as organic light emitting diodes and flexible displays due to their sufficient electrical and structural properties.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.48-48
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• 2007

P-type transparent conducting $CuGaO_2$ thin films have been prepared by DC/RF sputtering using Quartz(0001) and sapphire(0001) substrates. The target was fabricated by heating a stoichiometric mixture of CuO and $Ga_2O_3$ at 1373K for 12h under $N_2$ atmosphere. The film were deposited under mixture gas of Ar and $O_2(Ar:O_2=4:1)$ during 10~30min. and the as-deposited films were annealed at 1123K and $N_2$ atmosphere. Room temperature conductivity and the activation energy of the sintered body in the temperature range of 223K ~ 423K were 0 004S/cm, 1.9eV, respectively. XRD revealed that all of the as-deposited films were amorphous. Heating of the films deposited on Quartz substrates above 1123K resulted in crystallization with a second phase of $CuSiO_3$, which was assumed owing to reaction with Quartz substrate. The single phase of $CuGaO_2$ was obtained at the film deposited on the sapphire substrates. The transmittance after annealing of DC- and RF-sputtered films were 55~75% at 550nm. From the transmittance and reflectance measurement. the direct band gap of the DC/RF-sputtered films were 3.63eV and 3.57eV. and there was little difference between DC and RF sputtered films.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.355-358
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• 2011

As a II-IV compound semiconductor, ZnO has a wide band gap of 3.37 eV with transparent properties. Due to this transparent properties, ZnO materials can be also employed as the transparent conducting electrode materials. Recently, rapid progress has been made in the field of DSSC (dye sensitized solar cell)area. Therefore, strong demands have been required for the transparent electrodes with low temperature processing and cheap cost. In this paper, we will prepare ZnO thick films on the PET substrates for the electrode applications. We will investigate the structural and microstructure properties through the XRD, and SEM analysis, respectively. Also, we will study the electrical of specimens to apply the conducting electrode.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.388-388
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• 2011

Graphene, with its unique physical and structural properties, has recently become a proving ground for various physical phenomena, and is a promising candidate for a variety of electronic device and flexible display applications. The physical properties of graphene depend directly on the thickness. These properties lead to the possibility of its application in high-performance transparent conducting films (TCFs). Compared to indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes, which have a typical sheet resistance of ~60 ${\Omega}/sq$ and ~85% transmittance in the visible range, the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesized graphene electrodes have a higher transmittance in the visible to IR region and are more robust under bending. Nevertheless, the lowest sheet resistance of the currently available CVD graphene electrodes is higher than that of ITO. Here, we report an ingenious strategy, irradiation of MeV electron beam (e-beam) at room temperature under ambient condition,for obtaining size-homogeneous gold nanoparticle decorated on graphene. The nano-particlization promoted by MeV e-beam irradiation was investigated by transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy elemental mapping, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. These results clearly revealed that gold nanoparticle with 10~15 nm in mean size were decorated along the surface of the graphene after 1.0 MeV-e-beam irradiation. The fabrication high-performance TCF with optimized doping condition showed a sheet resistance of ~150 ${\Omega}/sq$ at 94% transmittance. A chemical transformation and charge transfer for the metal gold nanoparticle were systematically explored by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. This approach advances the numerous applications of graphene films as transparent conducting electrodes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.08a
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• pp.175-175
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• 2010

Transparent conducting oxide (TCO) films are widely used as transparent conducting thin film material for application in various fields such as solar cells, optoelectronic devices, heat mirrors and gas sensors, etc. Recently the increased utilization of many transparent electrodes has accelerated the development of inexpensive TCO materials. Indium tin oxide (ITO) film is well-known for TCO materials because of its low resistivity, but there is disadvantage that it is too expensive. ZnO film is cheaper than ITO but it shows thermally poor stability. On the contrary, antimony-doped tin oxide films (ATO) are more stable than TCO films such as Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) and ITO. Moreover, SnO2 film shows the best thermal and chemical stability, low cost and mechanical durability except the poor conductivity. However, annealing is proved to improve the conductivity of ATO film. Therefore, in this work, antimony (6 wt%) doped tin oxide films to improve the conductivity were deposited on 7059 corning glass by RF magnetron sputtering method for the application to transparent electrodes. In general, of all TCO films, glass is the most commonly selected substrate. However, for future development in flexible devices, glass is limited by its intrinsic inflexibility. In this study, we report the growth and properties of antimony doped tin oxide (ATO) films deposited on PES flexible substrate by using RF magnetron sputtering. The optimization process was performed varying the sputtering parameters, such as RF power and working pressure, and parameter effect on the structural, electrical and optical properties of the ATO films were investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.525-528
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• 2001

ZnO:Al thin film can be used as a transparent conducting oxide(TCO) which has low electric resistivity and high optical transmittance for the front electrode of amorphous silicon solar cells and display devices. This study of electrical, crystallographic and optical properties of Al doped ZnO thin films prepared by Facing Targets Sputtering (FTS), where strong internal magnets were contained in target holders to confine the plasma between the targets, is described. Optimal transmittance and resistivity was obtained by controlling flow rate of O$_2$ gas and substrate temperature. When the of gas rate of 0.3 and substrate temperature 200$^{\circ}C$ , ZnO:Al thin film had strongly oriented c-axis and lower resistivity(<10$\^$-4/Ω-cm).

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.07c
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• pp.1553-1555
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• 2003

Coatings on glass with highly transparent conducting oxide films(TCOs) are performed mostly by using indium tin oxide(ITO). This Oxide material is very common for applications where both high electrical conductivity. Photovoltaic cells, transparent electrical heater, selective optical filter, and a optical transmittance are essential. In this study, ITO thin films were deposited on $SiO_2$/soda-line glass plates by a dc magnetron sputtering technique. The crystallinity and electrical properties of the films were investigated by X-ray diffraction(XRD), atomic force microscopy(AFM) scanning and 4-point probe. The optical transmittance of ITO films in the range of 300-800nm were measured with a spectrophotometer. As a result, we obtained polycrystalline structured ITO films with (222), (400), and (440) peak. Transmittance of all the films were higher than 90% in the visible range.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.661-668
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• 2002

A study was made to examine the electrical, compositional, structural and morphological properties of Ag thin films deposited by DC magnetron sputtering in $O_2$ atmosphere with deposition temperature from room temperature to 15$0^{\circ}C$ using in-line sputter system. The Ag films deposited at temperature above $100^{\circ}C$ in oxygen atmosphere gave a similar specific resistivity to and even lower oxygen content than those deposited using pure Ar sputter gas The Ag films deposited with pure Ar gas was mainly composed of crystallites with [111] preferred orientation, while, for those deposited in oxygen atmosphere, more than 50% of the volume was composed of crystallites with [100] orientation. The difference in the micro structure did not cause any difference in the specific resistivity of Ag films. The results showed that the transparent conducting oxide films and the Ag films could be processed sequentially in the same deposition chamber with careful control of deposition temperature, which might result in a cost reduction for constructing the large scale in-line deposition system.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.351-355
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• 2010

Transparent conducting aluminum-doped ZnO thin films were deposited using a sol-gel process. In this study, the important deposition parameters were investigated thoroughly to determine the appropriate procedures to grow large area thin films with low resistivity and high transparency at low cost for device applications. The doping concentration of aluminum was adjusted in a range from 1 to 4 mol% by controlling the precursor concentration. The annealing temperatures for the pre-heat treatment and post-heat treatment was $250^{\circ}C$ and 400-$600^{\circ}C$, respectively. The SEM images show that Al doped and undoped ZnO films were quite uniform and compact. The XRD pattern shows that the Al doped ZnO film has poorer crystallinity than the undoped films. The crystal quality of Al doped ZnO films was improved with an increase of the annealing temperature to $600^{\circ}C$. Although the structure of the aluminum doped ZnO films did not have a preferred orientation along the (002) plane, these films had high transmittance (> 87%) in the visible region. The absorption edge was observed at approximately 370 nm, and the absorption wavelength showed a blue-shift with increasing doping concentration. The ZnO films annealed at $500^{\circ}C$ showed the lowest resistivity at 1 mol% Al doping.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.07a
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• pp.1096_1097
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• 2009

Aluminium doped zinc oxide(ZnO:Al) thin film, which is mainly used as a transparent conducting electrode in electronic devices, has many advantages compared with conventional indium tin oxide(ITO). In this paper in order to investigate the possible application of ZnO:Al thin films as a transparent conducting electrode for flexible film-typed dye sensitized solar cell (FT-DSCs), ZnO:Al and ITO thin films were prepared on the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by r. f. magnetron sputtering method. Specially one-inched FT-DSCs using either a ZnO:Al or ITO electrode were also fabricated separately under the same manufacturing conditions. Some properties of both the FT-DSCs with ZnO:Al and ITO transparent electrodes, such as conversion efficiency, fill factor, and photocurrent were measured and compared with each other. The results showed that by doping the ZnO target with 2 wt% of $Al_2O_3$, the film deposited at discharge power of 200W resulted in the minimum resistivity of $2.2\times10^{-3}\Omega/cm$ and at ransmittance of 91.7%, which are comparable with those of commercially available ITO. Two types of FT-DSCs showed nearly the same tendency of I-V characteristics and the same value of conversion efficiencies. Efficiency of FT-DSCs using ZnO:Al electrode was around 2.6% and that of fabricated FT-DSCs using ITO was 2.5%. This means that ZnO:Al thin film can be used in FT-DSCs as a transparent conducting layer.