• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.337-345
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• 2009

When the drill hole diameter for the package substrate is under $100{\mu}m$, the smear in the drill hole cannot be eliminated by wet desmear process only. We intended to change the substrate's hydrophobic characteristics to hydrophilic characteristics by adapting the atmospheric pressure plasma prior to the wet desmear process. Atmospheric pressure plasma process was made as the inline type equipment which is adequate for the package substrate's manufacturing process and remote DBD type electrodes were used for the equipment. As the result of atmospheric pressure plasma processing, the contact angle of the substrate was enhanced from 71 degree to 30 degree. Dielectric film thickness, drill hole diameter and surface roughness were measured to evaluated the characteristics of the wet desmear process in case of plasma processing and in case of none. By the measurement, it was analyzed that the process uniformity within the whole panel was largely enhanced. Also, it was verified that the smear in the drill hole was eliminated efficiently which was analyzed by the SEM image of the drill hole.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.725-733
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• 2008

Polyimide (PI) multilayer thin films were prepared by spin-coating from a poly(amic acid) (PAA) and poly(amic acid) ammonium salt (PAAS). PI was prepared from pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) and 4,4'-oxydianiline (ODA) PAA. Different compositions of PAAS were prepared by incorporating triethylamine (TEA) into PMDA-ODA PAA in dimethylacetamide. PI multilayer thin films were spin-coated from PMDA-ODA PAA and PAAS. The PAAS comprising cationic and anionic moieties were spherical with a particle size of $20{\sim}40\;nm$. Some particles showed layers with ammonium salts, despite poor ordering. Too much salt obstructed the interaction between the polymer chains and caused phase separation. A small amount of salt did not affect the interactions of the interlayer structure but did interrupt the stacking between chains. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) showed that the average decomposition temperature of the thin films was $611^{\circ}C$. All the films showed almost single-step, thermal decomposition behavior. The nanostructure of the multilayer thin films was confirmed by X -ray reflectivity (XRR). The LF 43 film, which was prepared with a 4:3 molar ratio of PMDA and ODA, was comprised of uniformly spherical PAAS particles that influenced the nanostructure of the interlayer by increasing the interaction forces. This result was supported by the atomic force microscopy (AFM) data. It was concluded that the relationship between the uniformity of the PAAS particle shapes and the interaction between the layers affected the optical and thermal properties of PI layered films.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.356-363
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• 2007

The stability of paste solutions for electroluminescence display(ELD) device was found to be greatly affected by kind and dosage of a stabilizer used. The stabilizer Disperbyk-180 showed the best stability performance against phosphor paste solutions among the stabilizers used during this study. The phosphor paste solutions remained stable over 90 days with a wide range of added amounts of Disperbyk-180. Based on the above results, screen printing test was performed. The addition of Disperbyk-180 into phosphor and dielectric paste solutions produced improved qualities such as no phase separation, no bubble generation and no significant viscosity change during printing process. Especially for the phosphor paste solution, both uniformity and brightness were significantly improved and the excellent adhesion onto the ITO film was found. The ELD device fabricated using the above same paste solutions showed brightness of $57.6cd/m^2$ at 100V and 400 Hz. The half lifetime of ELD device was measured as 1,250 hours and almost the same value observed with imported commercial paste solutions.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.149-154
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• 2007

Bragg reflecting waveguide devices have been fabricated on a flexible polymer substrate utilizing a post lift-off process which could Provide excellent uniformity of grating Patterns on Plastic film. The 510 m Period Bragg grating pattern is made by two methods. In the first sample the grating is fabricated by exposing the laser interference pattern on a photoresist, and then it is inscribed by $O_2$ plasma etching. The grating pattern of the second sample is formed by a PDMS soft mold imprinting process. The selective adhesion property of SU-8 material for Au and Si surfaces is utilized to prepare a 100-mm thick plastic substrate. Single mode waveguide is fabricated on the plastic substrate using polymer materials with refractive indices of 1.540 and 1.430 for the core and the cladding layers, respectively. The Bragg grating on Plastic substrate does not show any degradation in its spectral response compared to the reference sample made on a silicon wafer.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.13.1-13.1
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• 2009

Transparent electronics has attracted many interests, for it can open new applications for consumer electronics, transportation, business, and military. Among them, display backplane, thin film transistor (TFT) array would be the most attractive application. Many researchers have been investigating oxide semiconductors for transparent channel material of TFT since the report for transparent amorphous oxide semiconductor (TAOS) TFT by Hosono group and ZnO TFT by Wager group. Especially, oxide TFTs have been intensively investigated during a couple of years since the first demonstration of ZnO-TFT driving AM-OLED. Many papers regarding the fabrication and performance of oxide TFTs, and active matrix display driven by oxide TFTs have been reported. Now lots of people have confidence in the competitiveness of oxide TFTs for the backplane of AM-Display. Especially, high mobility, uniformity, fairly good stability, and low cost process make oxide TFTs applied even to a large size AM-OLED. Last year, Samsung mobile display, former SID, reported 12" AM-OLED driven by IZGO-TFT and it seems that the remained issue for the mass production is the bias temperature stability. Here, we will introduce the application of oxide TFT and important issue for oxide TFT to be used for the direct printing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.398-398
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• 2007

The Liquid Crystal (LC) alignment uniformity is very important in LC devices. The alignment mechanism of LC molecules on a rubbed polyimide (PI) surface is very important for both LC fundamental research and application. So, Generally a rubbing method to align LC has been widely used to mass-produce LCD panels. But because rubbing method is contact method between rubbing fabric and indium-tin-oxide glass or flexible substrate, rubbing method has some defects, such as the electrode charges and the creation of contaminating particles. Thus we strongly recommend a non-contact alignment technique for getting rid of some defects of rubbing method. Most recently, the LC aligning capabilities achieved by ion-beam exposure on the organic and nonorganic thin film surface have been reported successfully. In this research, we studied the tilt angle generation and electro-optical performances for a NLC on homeotropic polyimide surfaces with ion-beam exposure. The LC aligning capabilities of a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on a homeotropic PI surface using a new ion-beam method were studied. On the homeotropic PI surface, the tilt angle of the NLC by exposure ion-beam had a tendency to decrease as increased ion-beam energy density. And, on the homeotropic PI surface, the alignment character of the NLC with respect to ion-beam energy was good. And we achieved satisfactory result for EO character.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.281-285
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• 2020

Oxide semiconductor devices have become increasingly important because of their high mobility and good uniformity. The channel length of oxide semiconductor thin film transistors (TFTs) also shrinks as the display resolution increases. It is well known that reducing the channel length of a TFT is detrimental to the current saturation because of drain-induced barrier lowering, as well as the movement of the pinch-off point. In an organic light-emitting diode (OLED), the lack of current saturation in the driving TFT creates a major problem in the control of OLED current. To obtain improved current saturation in short channels, we fabricated indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) TFTs with single gate and double gate structures, and evaluated the electrical characteristics of both devices. For the double gate structure, we connected the bottom gate electrode to the source electrode, so that the electric potential of the bottom gate was fixed to that of the source. We denote the double gate structure with the bottom gate fixed at the source potential as the BGFP (bottom gate with fixed potential) structure. For the BGFP TFT, the current saturation, as determined by the output characteristics, is better than that of the conventional single gate TFT. This is because the change in the source side potential barrier by the drain field has been suppressed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.65-65
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• 2007

Microstructure and surface roughness of the sensing materials should be improved to use them in advanced sensor applications because the uneven surface roughness degrades the light reflection, pattern resolution, and devices performance. Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) processing was selected for improving the surface roughness of $CeO_2$ which is one of the well known materials for the oxygen gas sensors. Surface roughness and removal rate of spin coated $CeO_2$ thin films were examined with a change of CMP process parameters such as down force and table speed. The optimized process condition, reflected by the surface roughness with the hillock-free surface as well as the excellent removal rate with the good uniformity, was obtained. The effects of the improved surface roughness on the sensing property of $CeO_2$ thin films were also confirmed. The improved sensitivity of $CeO_2$ thin films for oxygen sensors were obtained after CMP process by the improved surface characteristics. Therefore, we conclude that sensing property of $CeO_2$ thin film is strongly dependent on the surface roughness of $CeO_2$ thin films by using CMP process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.276-279
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• 2004

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) of silicon nitride (SiN) is a proven technique for obtaining layers that meet the needs of surface passivation and anti-reflection coating. In addition, the deposition process appears to provoke bulk passivation as well due to diffusion of atomic hydrogen. This bulk passivation is an important advantage of PECVD deposition when compared to the conventional CVD techniques. A further advantage of PECVD is that the process takes place at a relatively low temperature of 300t, keeping the total thermal budget of the cell processing to a minimum. In this work SiN deposition was performed using a horizontal PECVD reactor system consisting of a long horizontal quartz tube that was radiantly heated. Special and long rectangular graphite plates served as both the electrodes to establish the plasma and holders of the wafers. The electrode configuration was designed to provide a uniform plasma environment for each wafer and to ensure the film uniformity. These horizontally oriented graphite electrodes were stacked parallel to one another, side by side, with alternating plates serving as power and ground electrodes for the RF power supply. The plasma was formed in the space between each pair of plates. Also this paper deals with the fabrication of multicrystalline silicon solar cells with PECVD SiN layers combined with high-throughput screen printing and RTP firing. Using this sequence we were able to obtain solar cells with an efficiency of 14% for polished multi crystalline Si wafers of size 125 m square.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.274-285
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• 2019

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), which is a material removal process involving chemical surface reactions and mechanical abrasive action, is an essential manufacturing process for obtaining high-quality semiconductor surfaces with ultrahigh precision features. Recent rapid growth in the industries of digital devices and semiconductors has accelerated the demands for processing of various substrate and film materials. In addition, to solve many issues and challenges related to high integration such as micro-defects, non-uniformity, and post-process cleaning, it has become increasingly necessary to approach and understand the processing mechanisms for various substrate materials and abrasive particle behaviors from a tribological point of view. Based on these backgrounds, we review recent CMP R&D trends in this study. We examine experimental and analytical studies with a focus on substrate materials and abrasive particles. For the reduction of micro-scratch generation, understanding the correlation between friction and the generation mechanism by abrasive particle behaviors is critical. Furthermore, the contact stiffness at the wafer-particle (slurry)-pad interface should be carefully considered. Regarding substrate materials, recent research trends and technologies have been introduced that focus on sapphire (${\alpha}$-alumina, $Al_2O_3$), silicon carbide (SiC), and gallium nitride (GaN), which are used for organic light emitting devices. High-speed processing technology that does not generate surface defects should be developed for low-cost production of various substrates. For this purpose, effective methods for reducing and removing surface residues and deformed layers should be explored through tribological approaches. Finally, we present future challenges and issues related to the CMP process from a tribological perspective.