• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09a
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• pp.34-35
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• 2006

The development of Micro MIM as a new manufacturing process for metallic micro parts made of advanced functional materials has been the subject of considerable research over the last years. This paper addresses important quality aspects on processing of new materials by Micro-MIM. Three examples of new functional materials that can be processed are reviewed in this paper. The first example is two-component-Micro-MIM to obtain multi-functional devices. A micro positioning encoder consisting of a magnetic / non-magnetic material combination is presented. The second issue is series production of the replicate of the smallest human bone in the ear (stapes) from Titanium as an example of medical application. Quality assurance and reproducibility in terms of injection moulding parameters are addressed. In the third part, first results on the processing of the shape memory alloy NiTi by Micro-MIM are presented. Potential applications include biocompatible devices and transportation, for example automotive and aerospace. Processing routes and initial microstructures obtained are discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.387-387
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• 2013

Currently, the flash memory and the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) have been used in a variety of applications. However, the downsizing of devices and the increasing density of recording medias are now in progress. So there are many demands for development of new semiconductor memory for next generation. Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is one of the prospective semiconductor memories with excellent features including non-volatility, fast access time, unlimited read/write endurance, low operating voltage, and high storage density. MRAM is composed of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS). The MTJ stack consists of various magnetic materials, metals, and a tunneling barrier layer. Recently, MgO thin films have attracted a great attention as the prominent candidates for a tunneling barrier layer in the MTJ stack instead of the conventional Al2O3 films, because it has low Gibbs energy, low dielectric constant and high tunneling magnetoresistance value. For the successful etching of high density MRAM, the etching characteristics of MgO thin films as a tunneling barrier layer should be developed. In this study, the etch characteristics of MgO thin films have been investigated in various gas mixes using an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICPRIE). The Cl2/Ar, CH3OH/Ar, and CH4/Ar gas mix were employed to find an optimized etching gas for MgO thin film etching. TiN thin films were employed as a hard mask to increase the etch selectivity. The etch rates were obtained using surface profilometer and etch profiles were observed by using the field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM).

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.493-498
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• 1999

With increasing demand for fast and reliable, yet economical data storage devices, the role of optical disk technology is becoming more important. In recent years, advanced laser technology combined with new materials has given the competitive edge over the traditional magnetic memory devices both in memory capacity and reliability of data retrieval. Continuing effort is being put into developing smaller and more complex structures for optical disks to increase their memory density. Characterization of such multilayered structure requires not only high spatial resolution for observation but also laborious specimen preparation. In this paper, the method of preparing optical disk specimens for TEM characterization is described in detail. The microstructural features in optical disks observed by TEM are also discussed.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.275-282
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• 2015

Since a NAND-flash memory is able to keep data during electricity-off and has small cost to store data per bytes, it is widely used on hand-held devices. It is necessary to use an index in order to process mass data effectively on the flash memory. However, since the flash memory requires high cost for a write operation and does not support an overwrite operation, it is possible to reduce the performance of the index when the disk based index is exploited. In this paper, we implement the fixed grid file index and evaluate the performance of the index on various conditions. To do this, we measure the average processing time by the ratio of query operations and update operations. We also the compare the processing times of the flash memory with those of the magnetic disk.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.159-163
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• 2016

Antiferromagnet (AFM)/ferromagnet (FM) bilayer structures are widely used in the magnetic devices of sensor and memory applications, as AFM materials can induce unidirectional anisotropy of the FM material via exchange coupling. The strength of the exchange coupling is known to be sensitive to quality of the interface of the AFM/FM bilayers. In this study, we utilize proton irradiation to modify the interface structures and investigate its effect on the magnetic properties of AFM/FM structures, including the exchange bias and magnetic thermoelectric effect. The magnetic properties of IrMn/CoFeB structures with various IrMn thicknesses are characterized after they are exposed to a proton beam of 3 MeV and $1{\sim}5{\times}10^{14}ions/cm^2$. We observe that the magnetic moment is gradually reduced as the amount of the dose is increased. On the other hand, the exchange bias field and thermoelectric voltage are not significantly affected by proton irradiation. This indicates that proton irradiation has more of an influence on the bulk property of the FM CoFeB layer and less of an effect on the IrMn/CoFeB interface.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.22-27
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• 2009

Reduction of the critical current density ($J_c$) for STT magnetization switching is most important issue of magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) based MRAM. This report describes how to decrease the Jc and will introduce the recent research progresses of STT-MRAM devices with material engineering and structural improvement, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.408-408
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• 2012

It is well known that magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is nonvolatile memory devices using ferromagnetic materials. MRAM has the merits such as fast access time, unlimited read/write endurance and nonvolatility. Although DRAM has many advantages containing high storage density, fast access time and low power consumption, it becomes volatile when the power is turned off. Owing to the attractive advantages of MRAM, MRAM is being spotlighted as an alternative device in the future. MRAM consists of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack and complementary metal- oxide semiconductor (CMOS). MTJ stacks are composed of various magnetic materials. FePt thin films are used as a pinned layer of MTJ stack. Up to date, an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICPRIE) method of MTJ stacks showed better results in terms of etch rate and etch profile than any other methods such as ion milling, chemical assisted ion etching (CAIE), reactive ion etching (RIE). In order to improve etch profiles without redepositon, a better etching process of MTJ stack needs to be developed by using different etch gases and etch parameters. In this research, influences of $O_2$ gas on the etching characteristics of FePt thin films were investigated. FePt thin films were etched using ICPRIE in $CH_4/O_2/Ar$ gas mix. The etch rate and the etch selectivity were investigated in various $O_2$ concentrations. The etch profiles were studied in varying etch parameters such as coil rf power, dc-bias voltage, and gas pressure. TiN was employed as a hard mask. For observation etch profiles, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was used.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.177-185
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• 2005

NAND-type flash memory is becoming increasingly popular as a large data storage for mobile computing devices. Since flash memory is an order of magnitude more expensive than magnetic disks, data compression can be effectively used in managing flash memory based storage systems. However, compressed data management in NAND-type flash memory is challenging because it supports only page-based I/Os. For example, when the size of compressed data is smaller than the page size. internal fragmentation occurs and this degrades the effectiveness of compression seriously. In this paper, we present an efficient flash compression layer (FCL) for NAND-type flash memory which stores several small compressed pages into one physical page by using a write buffer Based on prototype implementation and simulation studies, we show that the proposed scheme offers the storage of flash memory more than $140\%$ of its original size and expands the write bandwidth significantly.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.15D no.6
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• pp.733-740
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• 2008

Recently, mobile computing devices are used popularly. And quantity of information on mobile computing devices is being increased due to digitalization of information. So it needs an embedded DBMS for effective information management. Furthermore, since flash memory having a restriction on the number of partial write cycles is rapidly deployed on mobile computing devices as data storage and is more expensive than the conventional magnetic hard disk, the compressed data management system(CDMS) has been considered as an effective storage management technique for mobile computing devices in previous research. However, the research of CDMS is at the initial stage and has several problems. Hence, in this paper, we present additional storage management methods to solve the problems and improve the effectiveness of the CDMS for embedded DBMS.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.103-108
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• 2014

The flash memory which is exploited on hand-held devices such as smart phones is a non-volatile storage and has the benefit that it can store mass data at a small sized chip. To process queries on the mass data stored in the flash memory, the index scheme should be exploited. However, since the write operation of the flash memory is slower than the read operation and the overwrite is not supported, it is required to reevaluate the performance of the index and find out the drawbacks. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a space division typed index scheme on the flash memory. To do this, we implement the fixed grid file and measure the average speeds of the query and update processing on a various condition and compare the value of the flash memory with that of the magnetic disk.