• Solar Energy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.55-65
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• 2000

Better electrical and optical properties of ITO thin films were demanded for the window layer of CdS/CdTe solar cells. To match that demand, an ion beam sputtering system was used for the deposition of ITO thin films. The substrate temperature and ion beam energy were controlled to deposit high quality ITO thin films in two cases of Ar ion sputtering and Ar+$O_2$ ion sputtering. The microstructure changed from domain structure in ITO deposited by Ar ions to grain structure in ITO deposited by Ar+$O_2$ ions. The lowest resistivity of ITO films was $1.5\times10^{-4}{\Omega}cm$ at $100^{\circ}C$ substrate temperature in case of Ar ions sputtering. Transmittance in the visible range was over 80% above $100^{\circ}C$ substrate temperature.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.112-115
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• 2010

Transparent conducting undoped and Al impurity doped ZnO films were deposited on glass substrate by spin coat technique using 24 days aged ZnO precursor solution with solution of ethanol and diethanolamine. The films were characterized by UV-Visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), electrical resistivity ($\rho$), carrier concentration (n), and hall mobility ($\mu$) measurements. XRD data show that the deposited film shows polycrystalline nature with hexagonal wurtzite structure with preferential orientation along (002) crystal plane. The SEM images show that surface morphology, porosity and grain sizes are affected by doping concentration. The Al doped samples show high transmittance and better resistivity. With increasing Al concentration only mild change in optical band gap is observed. Optical properties are not affected by aging of parent solution. A lowest resistivity ($8.5 \times 10^{-2}$ ohm cm) is observed at 2 atomic percent (at.%) Al. With further increase in Al concentration, the resistivity started to increase significantly. The decrease resistivity with increasing Al concentration can be attributed to increase in both carrier concentration and hall mobility.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.111.1-111.1
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• 2012

Interest in flexible transparent conducting films (TCFs) has been growing recently mainly due to the demand for electrodes incorporated in flexible or wearable displays in the future. Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films, which have been traditionally used as the TCFs, have a serious obstacle in TCFs applications. SWNTs are the most appropriate materials for conductive films for displays due to their excellent high mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. In this work, the fabrication by the spraying process of transparent SWNT films and reduction of its sheet resistance on PET substrates is researched Arc-discharge SWNTs were dispersed in deionized water by adding sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as surfactant and sonicated, followed by the centrifugation. The dispersed SWNT was spray-coated on PET substrate and dried on a hotplate. When the spray process was terminated, the TCF was immersed into deionized water to remove the surfactant and then it was dried on hotplate. The TCF film was then was doped with Au-ionic doping treatment, rinsed with deionized water and dried. The surface morphology of TCF was characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy. The sheet resistance and optical transmission properties of the TCF were measured with a four-point probe method and a UV-visible spectrometry, respectively. This was confirmed and discussed on the XPS and UPS studies. We show that 87 ${\Omega}/{\Box}$ sheet resistances with 81% transmittance at the wavelength of 550nm. The changes in electrical and optical conductivity of SWNT film before and after Au-ionic doping treatments were discussed. The effect of Au-ion treatment on the electronic structure change of SWNT films was investigated by Raman and XPS.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.7-11
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• 2008

ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) thin films have been extensively studied for OLED devices because they have high transparent properties in the visible wavelength and a low electrical resistivity. These ITO films are deposited by rf-magnetron sputtering under different ambient gases (Ar, Ar+$O_2$ and Ar+$H_2$) at $300^{\circ}C$. In order to investigate the influences of the oxygen and hydrogen, the flow rate of oxygen and hydrogen in argon has been changed from 0.5sccm to 5sccm and from 0.01sccm to 0.25sccm respectively. The resistivity of ITO film increased with increasing flow rate of $O_2$ under Ar+$O_2$ while it is nearly constant under Ar+$H_2$. And the peak of ITO films obtained (222) and (400) orientations and the average transmittance was over 80% in the visible range. The OLED device fabricated with different ITO substrates made by configuration of ITO/$\alpha$-NPD/Alq3/LiF/Al to elucidate the performance of ITO substrate for OLED device.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.434-436
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• 2013

Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) was substitutes of the SnO2:F films on soda lime glass substrate in the photovoltaic devices such as CIGS, CdTe and DSSC due to good properties and low cost. However, it was reported that the electrical resistivity of GZO is unstable above $300^{\circ}C$ in air atmosphere. To improve thermal stability of GZO thin films at high temperature above $300^{\circ}C$ an $TiO_2$ thin film was deposited on the top of GZO thin films as a barrier layer by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) method. $TiO_2$ thin films were deposited at various thicknesses from 25 nm to 100 nm. Subsequently, these films were annealed at temperature of $300^{\circ}C$, $400^{\circ}C$, $500^{\circ}C$ in air atmosphere for 20 min. The XRD measurement results showed all the films had a preferentially oriented ( 0 0 2 ) peak, and the intensity of ( 0 0 2 ) peak nearly did not change both GZO (300 nm) single layer and $TiO_2$ (50 nm)/GZO (300 nm) double layer. The resistivity of GZO (300 nm) single layer increased from $7.6{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}m$ (RT) to $7.7{\times}10^{-2}{\Omega}m$ ($500^{\circ}C$). However, in the case of the $TiO_2$ (50 nm)/GZO (300 nm) double layer, resistivity showed small change from $7.9{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}m$ (RT) to $5.2{\times}10^{-3}{\Omega}m$ ($500^{\circ}C$). Meanwhile, the average transmittance of all the films exceeded 80% in the visible spectrum, which suggests that these films will be suitable for photovoltaic devices.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.587-591
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• 2013

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) has good properties such as high conductivity, optical transmittance, and chemical stability, while offering relatively weak physicochemical properties. The main purpose of this paper is the improvement of physicochemical properties such as solvent resistance and pencil hardness of PEDOT. Carboxyl groups in the anionic type waterborne polyurethane (WPU) chains can effectively crosslink each other in the presence of aziridine, resulting in physicochemically robust PEDOT/WPU organic-organic hybrid conductive thin films. The electrical conductivity, optical properties, and physicochemical properties of the hybrid conductive film were compared by varying the solid content and WPU portion in the coating precursor solution. From the results, the transparency and surface resistance of the hybrid film show a decreasing tendency with increasing solid content in the coating precursor. Moreover, solvent resistance and hardness were dramatically enhanced by hybridization of PEDOT and crosslinked WPU due to curing reactions between carboxyl groups.

• Journal of Information Display
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.52-60
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• 2001

The electrical and mechanical properties in indium-tin-oxide films deposited on polymer substrate were examined. The materials of substrates were polyethersulfone (PES) which have gas barrier layer and anti-glare coating for plastic-based devices. The experiments were performed by rf-magnetron sputtering using a special instrument and buffer layers. Therefore, we obtained a very flat polymer substrate deposited ITO film and investigated the effects of buffer layers, and the instrument. Moreover, the influences of an oxygen partial pressure and post-deposition annealing in ITO films deposited on polymer substrates were clarified. X-ray diffraction observation, measurement of electrical property, and optical microscope observation were performed for the investigation of micro-structure and electro-mechanical properties, and they indicated that as-deposited ITO thin films are amorphous and become quasi-crystalline after adjusting oxygen partial pressure and thermal annealing above $180^{\circ}C$. As a result, we obtained 20-25 ${\Omega}/sq$ of ITO films with good transmittance (above 80 %) of oxygen contents with under 0.2 % and vacuum annealing. Furthermore, using organic buffer layer, we obtained ITO films which have a rather high electrical resistance (40-45 ${\Omega}/sq$) but have improved optical (more than 85 %) and mechanical characteristics compared to the counterparts. Consequently, a prototype reflective color plastic film LCD was fabricated using the PES polymer substrates to confirm whether the ITO films could be realized in accordance with our experimental results.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.53-58
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• 2017

In the age of oil exhaustion, low cost, semi-transparent solar cell, the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) has attracted significant attention since 1991 of $Gr{\ddot{a}}tzel$ report. To enhance the light-harvest capability of the photoelectric electrode, and efficiency of photoelectric transformation of the DSC, scattering layer of various structure have been proposed to photoelectric electrode materials. The scattering center of scattering layer needs the large titanium dioxide nanoparticles of 250 - 300 nm in diameter. In this study, the large sized $TiO_2$ nanocyrstals of around 300 nm were synthesized using the modified sol-gel process. According to the analysis of XRD and TEM, the synthesized $TiO_2$ nanoparticles exhibit single crystals of anatase phase. The optical transmittance of the synthesized titanium dioxide film prepared by spin coating is around 50% at 550 nm. It is suitable for scattering layer as a scattering center, and expected to enhance the efficiency of photoelectric transformation of the DSC.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2009

Device quality indium tin oxide (ITO) films are deposited on glass substrates and ultra-thin diamond-like carbon films are deposited as a buffer layer on ITO by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser at 355 nm and 532 nm wavelength. ITO films deposited at room temperature are largely amorphous although their optical transmittances in the visible range are > 90%. The resistivity of their amorphous ITO films is too high to enable an efficient organic light-emitting device (OLED), in contrast to that deposited by a KrF laser. Substrate heating at $200^{\circ}C$ with laser wavelength of 355 nm, the ITO film resistivity decreases by almost an order of magnitude to $2{\times}10^{-4}\;{\Omega}\;cm$ while its optical transmittance is maintained at > 90%. The thermally induced crystallization of ITO has a preferred <111> directional orientation texture which largely accounts for the lowering of film resistivity. The background gas and deposition distance, that between the ITO target and the glass substrate, influence the thin-film microstructures. The optical and electrical properties are compared to published results using other nanosecond lasers and other fluence, as well as the use of ultra fast lasers. Molecularly doped, single-layer OLEDs of ITO/(PVK+TPD+$Alq_3$)/Al which are fabricated using pulsed-laser deposited ITO samples are compared to those fabricated using the commercial ITO. Effects such as surface texture and roughness of ITO and the insertion of DLC as a buffer layer into ITO/DLC/(PVK+TPD+$Alq_3$)/Al devices are investigated. The effects of DLC-on-ITO on OLED improvement such as better turn-on voltage and brightness are explained by a possible reduction of energy barrier to the hole injection from ITO into the light-emitting layer.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.39-44
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• 2011

In this study, we have investigated the structural and electrical characteristics of IZO thin films deposited on flexible substrate for the OLED (organic light emitting diodes) devices. For this purpose, PES was used for flexible substrate and IZO thin films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering under oxygen ambient gases (Ar, $Ar+O_2$) at room temperature. In order to investigate the influences of the oxygen, the flow rate of oxygen in argon mixing gas has been changed from 0.1sccm to 0.5sccm. All the samples show amorphous structure regardless of flow rate. The electrical resistivity of IZO films increased with increasing flow rate of $O_2$ under $Ar+O_2$. All the films showed the average transmittance over 85% in the visible range. The OLED device was fabricated with different IZO electrodes made by configuration of IZO/a-NPD/DPVB/$Alq_3$/LiF/Al to elucidate the performance of IZO substrate. OLED devices with the amorphous-IZO (a-IZO) anode film show better current density-voltage-luminance characteristics than that of OLED devices with the commercial crystalline-ITO (c-ITO) anode film. It can be explained that very flat surface roughness and high work function of a-IZO anode film lead to more efficient hole injection by reduction of interface barrier height between anode and organic layers. This suggests that a-IZO film is a promising anode materials substituting conventional c-ITO anode in OLED devices.