• Title/Summary/Keyword: energy devices

Search Result 2,954, Processing Time 0.04 seconds

Manufacturing of Monodisperse Pectin Hydrogel Microfibers Using Partial Gelation in Microfluidic Devices (미세유체 장치에서 부분젤화법을 이용한 단분산성 펙틴 하이드로젤 미세섬유의 제조)

  • Jin, Si Hyung;Kim, Chaeyeon;Lee, Byungjin;Shim, Kyu-Rak;Kim, Dong Young;Lee, Chang-Soo
    • Clean Technology
    • /
    • v.23 no.3
    • /
    • pp.270-278
    • /
    • 2017
  • This study introduces a method to easily fabricate highly monodisperse pectin hydrogel microfibers in a microfluidic device by using partial gelation. The hydrodynamic parameters between the pectin aqueous solution and the calcium ions containing oil solution are precisely controlled to form a stable elongation flow of the pectin aqueous solution, and partial gelation of the pectin aqueous solution is performed by the chelating of the calcium ions at the interface between the two phases. The partially gelled pectin aqueous solution is phase-separated from the oil solution in an aqueous calcium chloride solution outside the microfluidic device and is completely gelled to produce monodisperse pectin hydrogel microfibers. The thickness of the pectin hydrogel microfiber is controlled in a reproducible manner by controlling the volumetric flow rate of the initially injected pectin aqueous solution. The pectin hydrogel microfibers were 200 to 500 micrometers in diameter and had a coefficient of variation below 5% under all thickness conditions, indicating that the pectin hydrogel microfibers produced by partial gelation are highly monodisperse. In addition, biomaterials can be immobilized to the pectin hydrogel microfibers produced by a single process, demonstrating the possibility that our pectin hydrogel microfiber can be used as carriers for biomaterials or tissue engineering.

Improving Charge Injection Characteristics and Electrical Performances of Polymer Field-Effect Transistors by Selective Surface Energy Control of Electrode-Contacted Substrate (전극 접촉영역의 선택적 표면처리를 통한 유기박막트랜지스터 전하주입특성 및 소자 성능 향상에 대한 연구)

  • Choi, Giheon;Lee, Hwa Sung
    • Journal of Adhesion and Interface
    • /
    • v.21 no.3
    • /
    • pp.86-92
    • /
    • 2020
  • We confirmed the effects on the device performances and the charge injection characteristics of organic field-effect transistor (OFET) by selectively differently controlling the surface energies on the contact region of the substrate where the source/drain electrodes are located and the channel region between the two electrodes. When the surface energies of the channel and contact regions were kept low and increased, respectively, the field-effect mobility of the OFET devices was 0.063 ㎠/V·s, the contact resistance was 132.2 kΩ·cm, and the subthreshold swing was 0.6 V/dec. They are the results of twice and 30 times improvements compared to the pristine FET device, respectively. As the results of analyzing the interfacial trap density according to the channel length, a major reason of the improved device performances could be anticipated that the pi-pi overlapping direction of polymer semiconductor molecules and the charge injection pathway from electrode is coincided by selective surface treatment in the contact region, which finally induces the decreases of the charge trap density in the polymer semiconducting film. The selective surface treatment method for the contact region between the electrode and the polymer semiconductor used in this study has the potential to maximize the electrical performances of organic electronics by being utilized with various existing processes to lower the interface resistance.

Plasmonic Enhanced Light Absorption by Silver Nanoparticles Formed on Both Front and Rear Surface of Polycrystalline Silicon Thin Film Solar Cells

  • Park, Jongsung;Park, Nochang;Varlamov, Sergey
    • Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
    • /
    • 2014.02a
    • /
    • pp.493-493
    • /
    • 2014
  • The manufacturing cost of thin-film photovoltics can potentially be lowered by minimizing the amount of a semiconductor material used to fabricate devices. Thin-film solar cells are typically only a few micrometers thick, whereas crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer solar cells are $180{\sim}300\mu}m$ thick. As such, thin-film layers do not fully absorb incident light and their energy conversion efficiency is lower compared with that of c-Si wafer solar cells. Therefore, effective light trapping is required to realize commercially viable thin-film cells, particularly for indirect-band-gap semiconductors such as c-Si. An emerging method for light trapping in thin film solar cells is the use of metallic nanostructures that support surface plasmons. Plasmon-enhanced light absorption is shown to increase the cell photocurrent in many types of solar cells, specifically, in c-Si thin-film solar cells and in poly-Si thin film solar cell. By proper engineering of these structures, light can be concentrated and coupled into a thin semiconductor layer to increase light absorption. In many cases, silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NP) are formed either on the front surface or on the rear surface on the cells. In case of poly-Si thin film solar cells, Ag NPs are formed on the rear surface of the cells due to longer wavelengths are not perfectly absorbed in the active layer on the first path. In our cells, shorter wavelengths typically 300~500 nm are also not effectively absorbed. For this reason, a new concept of plasmonic nanostructure which is NPs formed both the front - and the rear - surface is worth testing. In this simulation Al NPs were located onto glass because Al has much lower parasitic absorption than other metal NPs. In case of Ag NP, it features parasitic absorption in the optical frequency range. On the other hand, Al NP, which is non-resonant metal NP, is characterized with a higher density of conduction electrons, resulting in highly negative dielectric permittivity. It makes them more suitable for the forward scattering configuration. In addition to this, Ag NP is located on the rear surface of the cell. Ag NPs showed good performance enhancement when they are located on the rear surface of our cells. In this simulation, Al NPs are located on glass and Ag NP is located on the rear Si surface. The structure for the simulation is shown in figure 1. Figure 2 shows FDTD-simulated absorption graphs of the proposed and reference structures. In the simulation, the front of the cell has Al NPs with 70 nm radius and 12.5% coverage; and the rear of the cell has Ag NPs with 157 nm in radius and 41.5% coverage. Such a structure shows better light absorption in 300~550 nm than that of the reference cell without any NPs and the structure with Ag NP on rear only. Therefore, it can be expected that enhanced light absorption of the structure with Al NP on front at 300~550 nm can contribute to the photocurrent enhancement.

  • PDF

Electrochemical Properties of Lithium Secondary Battery and the Synthesis of Spherical Li4Ti5O12 Powder by Using TiCl4 As a Starting Material (TiCl4를 출발원료로한 구형 Li4Ti5O12 분말합성 및 리튬이차 전지특성)

  • Choi, Byung-Hyun;Ji, Mi-Jung;Kwon, Yong-Jin;Kim, Eun-Kyung;Nahm, Sahn
    • Korean Journal of Materials Research
    • /
    • v.20 no.12
    • /
    • pp.669-675
    • /
    • 2010
  • One of the greatest challenges for our society is providing powerful electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells are among the most promising candidates in terms of energy and power density. As the starting material, $TiCl_4{\cdot}YCl_3$ solution and dispersing agent (HCP) were mixed and synthesized using ammonia as the precipitation agent, in order to prepare the nano size Y doped spherical $TiO_2$ precursor. Then, the $Li_4Ti_5O_{12}$ was synthesized using solid state reaction method through the stoichiometric mixture of Y doped spherical $TiO_2$ precursor and LiOH. The Ti mole increased the concentration of the spherical particle size due to the addition of HPC with a similar particle size distribution in a well in which $Li_4Ti_5O_{12}$ spherical particles could be obtained. The optimal synthesis conditions and the molar ratio of the Ti 0.05 mol reaction at $50^{\circ}C$ for 30 minutes and at $850^{\circ}C$ for 6 hours heat treatment time were optimized. $Li_4Ti_5O_{12}$ was prepared by the above conditions as a working electrode after generating the Coin cell; then, electrochemical properties were evaluated when the voltage range of 1.5V was flat, the initial capacity was 141 mAh/g, and cycle retention rate was 86%; also, redox reactions between 1.5 and 1.7V, which arose from the insertion and deintercalation of 0.005 mole of Y doping is not a case of doping because the C-rate characteristics were significantly better.

A design method for optical fiber filter of lattice structure (격자형 광파이버필터의 설계에 관한 연구)

  • 이채욱;문병현;김신환
    • The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
    • /
    • v.18 no.9
    • /
    • pp.1248-1256
    • /
    • 1993
  • The propagation and delay properties in opical fiber are particularly attractive because digital signal processing and conventional analog signal processing techniques such as those using surface acoustic wave devices are limited In their usefulness for signal bandwidth exceeding one or two GHz, although they are very effective at lower frequencies. Since an accurate, low loss and short time delay elements can be obtained by using such an optical fiber, optical signal precessing has attracted much attention for high speed and broad-band signal precessing in particular channel separation filtering for optical FDM signals. In this paper, we consider a coherent optical lattice filter, which uses coherent light sources and consists of directional couplers and optical fiber delay elemnts. The optical fiber fitters are more restricted than the usual digital filters. The reasons are as follows. 1) the coupling coefficients of directional couplers are restricted to the number between 0 and 1. 2) optical signal E(complex amplitude) is divided into J If-$\boxUl$ and J L/7$\div$$\boxUl$ at the directional coupler. Considering these restrictions and in this case all the coupling coefficients of summing and branching elements are set to be equal, we have given design formulae for optical lattice filter, which make the best use of optical signal energy.

  • PDF

Synthesis and Photovoltaic Properties of Alternating Conjugated Polymers Derived from Thiophene-Benzothiadiazole Block and Fluorene/Indenofluorene Units

  • Li, Jianfeng;Tong, Junfeng;Zhang, Peng;Yang, Chunyan;Chen, Dejia;Zhu, Yuancheng;Xia, Yangjun;Fan, Duowang
    • Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
    • /
    • v.35 no.2
    • /
    • pp.505-512
    • /
    • 2014
  • A new donor-accepter-donor-accepter-donor (D-A-D-A-D) type 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole-thiophene-based acceptor unit 2,5-di(4-(5-bromo-4-octylthiophen-2-yl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazol-7-yl)thiophene ($DTBTTBr_2$) was synthesized. Copolymerized with fluorene and indeno[1,2-b]fluorene electron-rich moieties, two alternating narrow band gap (NBG) copolymers PF-DTBTT and PIF-DTBTT were prepared. And two copolymers exhibit broad and strong absorption in the range of 300-700 nm with optical band gap of about 1.75 eV. The highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy levels vary between -5.43 and -5.52 eV and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels range from -3.64 to -3.77 eV. Potential applications of the copolymers as electron donor material and $PC_{71}BM$ ([6,6]-phenyl-$C_{71}$ butyric acid methyl ester) as electron acceptors were investigated for photovoltaic solar cells (PSCs). Photovoltaic performances based on the blend of PF-DTBTT/$PC_{71}BM$ (w:w; 1:2) and PIF-DTBTT/$PC_{71}BM$ (w:w; 1:2) with devices configuration as ITO/PEDOT: PSS/blend/Ca/Al, show an incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) of 2.34% and 2.56% with the open circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$) of 0.87 V and 0.90 V, short circuit current density ($J_{sc}$) of $6.02mA/cm^2$ and $6.12mA/cm^2$ under an AM1.5 simulator ($100mA/cm^2$). The photocurrent responses exhibit the onset wavelength extending up to 720 nm. These results indicate that the resulted narrow band gap copolymers are viable electron donor materials for polymer solar cells.

Fabrication and Catalysis of $SiO_2$-Coated Ag@Au Nanoboxes

  • Lee, Jae-Won;Jang, Du-Jeon
    • Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
    • /
    • 2013.02a
    • /
    • pp.588-588
    • /
    • 2013
  • Nanoscale noble-metals have attracted enormous attention from researchers in various fields of study because of their unusual optical properties as well as novel chemical properties. They have possible uses in diverse applications such as devices, transistors, optoelectronics, information storages, and energy converters. It is well-known that nanoparticles of noble-metals such as silver and gold show strong absorption bands in the visible region due to their surface-plasmon oscillation modes of conductive electrons. Silver nanocubes stand out from various types of Silver nanostructures (e.g., spheres, rods, bars, belts, and wires) due to their superior performance in a range of applications involvinglocalized surface plasmon resonance, surface-enhanced Raman scattering, and biosensing. In addition, extensive efforts have been devoted to the investigation of Gold-based nanocomposites to achieve high catalytic performances and utilization efficiencies. Furthermore, as the catalytic reactivity of Silver nanostructures depends highly on their morphology, hollow Gold nanoparticles having void interiors may offer additional catalytic advantages due to their increased surface areas. Especially, hollow nanospheres possess structurally tunable features such as shell thickness, interior cavity size, and chemical composition, leading to relatively high surface areas, low densities, and reduced costs compared with their solid counterparts. Thus, hollow-structured noblemetal nanoparticles can be applied to nanometer-sized chemical reactors, efficient catalysts, energy-storage media, and small containers to encapsulate multi-functional active materials. Silver nanocubes dispersed in water have been transformed into Ag@Au nanoboxes, which show highly enhanced catalytic properties, by adding $HAuCl_4$. By using this concept, $SiO_2$-coated Ag@Au nanoboxes have been synthesized via galvanic replacement of $SiO_2$-coated Ag nanocubes. They have lower catalytic ability but more stability than Ag@Au nanoboxes do. Thus, they could be recycled. $SiO_2$-coated Ag@Au nanoboxes have been found to catalyze the degradation of 4-nitrophenol efficiently in the presence of $NaBH_4$. By changing the amount of the added noble metal salt to control the molar ratio Au to Ag, we could tune the catalytic properties of the nanostructures in the reduction of the dyes. The catalytic ability of $SiO_2$-coated Ag@Au nanoboxes has been found to be much more efficient than $SiO_2$-coated Ag nanocubes. Catalytic performances were affected noteworthily by the metals, sizes, and shapes of noble-metal nanostructures.

  • PDF

Study on the Improvement of BGA Solderability in Electroless Nickel/Gold Deposit (무전해 Ni/Au 도금에서의 BGA Solderability 특성 개선에 관한 연구)

  • 민재상;황영호;조일제
    • Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
    • /
    • v.8 no.3
    • /
    • pp.55-62
    • /
    • 2001
  • With a spread of BGA, CSP and fine pitch devices, the need of flatter surface finish in bare board is becoming more critical in solderability. The electroless Ni/Au plating has a solution of these needs and also has being spread to apply to surface finish for bare board in many electronic goods. But, the electroless Ni/Au plating had several issues such as Ni oxidation and phosphorous contents. Before this study, we studied on the effect of BGA solderability in electroless Ni/Au plating and chose some major factors such as the oxidation property of NiP plating and warpage of board. Firstly, we made test board with various plating conditions and improved the plating property through the improvement of NiP oxidation reducing P content. Also, we minimized the warpage of board with the improvement of inner layer structure and the analysis of warpage. For the evaluation of solderability, we analyzed the warpage of board and the plating property after mounting BGA on the board with optimizing conditions. The solder joint of BGA is investigated by SEM(Scanning Electronic Microscope) and OM(Optical Microscope). The composition of joint is used by EDS(Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy). We analyzed the fracture strength and mode by ball shear teser.

  • PDF

Semi-active Control of a Seismically Excited Cable-Stared Bridge Considering Dynamic Models of MR Fluid Damper (MR 유체 댐퍼의 동적모델을 고려한 사장교의 반(半)능동제어)

  • Jung, Hyung-Jo;Park, Kyu-Sik;Spencer, B.F.,Jr;Lee, In-Won
    • Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
    • /
    • v.6 no.2
    • /
    • pp.63-71
    • /
    • 2002
  • This paper examines the ASCE first generation benchmark problem for a seismically excited cable-stayed bridge, and proposes a new semi-active control strategy focusing on inclusion of effects of control-structure interaction. This benchmark problem focuses on a cable-stayed bridge in Cope Girardeau, Missouri, USA, for which construction is expected to be completed in 2003. Seismic considerations were strongly considered in the design of this bridge due to the location of the bridge in the New Madrid seismic zone and its critical role as a principal crossing of the Mississippi River. In this paper, magnetorheological(MR) fluid dampers are proposed as the supplemental damping devices, and a clipped-optimal control algorithm is employed. Several types of dynamic models for MR fluid dampers, such as a Bingham model, a Bouc-Wen model, and a modified Bouc-Wen model, are considered, which are obtained from data based on experimental results for full-scale dampers. Because the MR fluid damper is a controllable energy-dissipation device that cannot add mechanical energy to the structural system, the proposed control strategy is fail-safe in that bounded-input, bounded-output stability of the controlled structure is guaranteed. Numerical simulation results show that the performance of the proposed semi-active control strategy using MR fluid dampers is quite effective.

Characteristics of Photon Beam through a Handmade Build-Up Modifier as a Substitute of a Bolus (Bolus를 대체하기 위해 자체 제작된 선량상승영역 변환기를 투과한 광자선의 특성)

  • Kim, Sung Joon;Lee, Seoung Jun;Moon, Su Ho;Seol, Ki Ho;Lee, Jeong Eun
    • Progress in Medical Physics
    • /
    • v.25 no.4
    • /
    • pp.225-232
    • /
    • 2014
  • We evaluated the effect of scatter on a build-up region based on the measured percent depth dose (PDD) of high-energy photon beams that penetrated a handmade build-up modifier (BM) as a substitute of bolus. BM scatter factors ($S_{BM}$) were calculated based on the PDDs of photon beams that penetrated through the BM. The calculated $S_{BM}$ values were normalized to 1 at the square field side (SFS) of 30 mm without a BM. For the largest SFS (200 mm), the SBM values for a 6-MV beam were 1.331, 1.519, 1.598, 1.641, and 1.657 for the corresponding BM thickness values. For a 10-MV beam, the $S_{BM}$ values were 1.384, 1.662, 1.825, 1.913, and 2.001 for the corresponding BM thickness values. The BM yielded 76% of the bolus efficiency. We expect BM to become useful devices for deep-set patient body parts to which it is difficult to apply a bolus.