• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.556-561
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• 2008

This paper reports the characteristics of piezoelectric microspeakers that are audible in open air with high quality piezoelectric AlN thin film according to the materials properties. When we use a tensile-stressed silicon nitride diaphragm as a supporting layer, the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) is relatively small and constant at low frequency region and shows about 70 dB at 10 kHz. However, in case of a compressively stressed composite diaphragm, the SPL of the fabricated microspeakers shows higher output pressure than those of a tensile-stressed diaphragm. It produces more than 66 dB from 100 Hz to 15 kHz and the highest SPL is about 100 dB at 9.3 kHz with $20V_{peak-to-peak}$, sinusoidal input biases and at 10 mm distances from the fabricated microspeakers to the reference microphone. From the experimental results, it is superior to have a compressively composite diaphragm in order to produce a high SPL in piezoelectric microspeaker.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.353-360
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• 2012

As semiconductor device technology continuously shrinks, low-open area etch process prevails in front-end etch process, such as contact etch as well as one cylindrical storage (OCS) etch. To eliminate over loaded wafer processing test, it is commonly performed to emply diced small coupons at stage of initiative process development. In nominal etch condition, etch responses of whole wafer test and coupon test may be regarded to provide similar results; however, optical emission spectroscopy (OES) which is frequently utilize to monitor etch chemistry inside the chamber cannot be regarded as the same, especially etch mask is not the same material with wafer chuck. In this experiment, we compared OES data acquired from two cases of etch experiments; one with coupon etch tests mounted on photoresist coated wafer and the other with coupons only on the chuck. We observed different behaviors of OES data from the two sets of experiment, and the analytical results showed that careful investigation should be taken place in OES study, especially in coupon size etch.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.139-142
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• 2013

Silicon nanowire (SiNW) silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) flash memory devices were fabricated and their electrical characteristics were analyzed. Compared to planar SONOS devices, these SiNW SONOS devices have good program/erase (P/E) characteristics and a large threshold voltage ($V_T$) shift of 2.5 V in 1ms using a gate pulse of +14 V. The devices also show excellent immunity to short channel effects (SCEs) due to enhanced gate controllability, which becomes more apparent as the nanowire width decreases. This is attributed to the fully depleted mode operation as the nanowire becomes narrower. 3D TCAD simulations of both devices show that the electric field of the junction area is significantly reduced in the SiNW structure.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.96-101
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• 2011

The thin films of TiN have been used extensively as wear-resistant materials, for instance, such as tools of high-speed cutting, metal mold forming etc. In these days, because the thin films capable of being used more severe conditions are needed, the technologies of arc ion plating are tried to improve its characteristics. The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of thin films of (Ti,Cr)N compared with those of TiN. The method of arc ion plating, which is known as showing good tight-adherence and productivity, was used. After manufacturing thin films of ($Ti_{1-x}Cr_{x}$)N (x=0~1) with change of Cr in (Ti,Cr) target, atomic concentration, structure, size of crystallite, residual stress and surface roughness of thin films on substrate were investigated. As the results, it was confirmed that Cr atomic concentrations of thin films were proportionally changed with Cr atomic concentrations of target, and thin films of ($Ti_{1-x}Cr_{x}$)N (x=0~1) showed NaCl type and CrN existed as solid solution to TiN.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.218-224
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• 2003

This paper describes a novel MEMS integration technique on a CMOS chip. MEMS integration on CMOS circuit has many advantages in view of manufacturing cost and reliability. The surface topography of a CMOS chip from a commercial foundry has 0.9 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ bumps due to the conformal coating on aluminum interconnect patterns, which are used for addressing each MEMS element individually. Therefore, it is necessary to achieve a flat mirror-like CMOS chip fer the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) such as micro mirror array. Such CMOS chip needs an additional thickness of the dielectric passivation layer to ease the subsequent planarization process. To overcome a temperature limit from the aluminum thermal degradation, this study uses RF sputtering of silicon nitride at low temperature and then polishes the CMOS chip together with the surrounding dummy pieces to define a polishing plane. Planarization reduces 0.9 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ of the bumps to less than 25 nm.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.16 no.12 s.117
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• pp.1272-1278
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• 2006

This paper presents a novel MEMS condenser microphone with rigid backplate to enhance acoustic characteristics. The MEMS condenser microphone consists of membrane and backplate chips which are bonded together by gold-tin(Au/Sn) eutectic solder bonding. The membrane chip has $2.5mm{\times}2.5mm$, 0.5${\mu}m$ thick low stress silicon nitride membrane, $2mm{\times}2mm$ Au/Ni/Cr membrane electrode, and 3${\mu}m$ thick Au/Sn layer. The backplate chip has $2mm{\times}2mm$, 150${\mu}m$ thick single crystal silicon rigid backplate, $1.8mm{\times}1.8mm$ backplate electrode, and air gap, which is fabricated by bulk micromachining and silicon deep reactive ion etching. Slots and $50{\sim}60{\mu}m$ radius circular acoustic holes to reduce air damping are also formed in the backplate chip. The fabricated microphone sensitivity is 39.8 ${\mu}V/Pa$(-88 dB re. 1 V/Pa) at 1 kHz and 28 V polarization voltage. The microphone shows flat frequency response within 1 dB between 20 Hz and 5 kHz.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.56-65
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• 1996

The result of wear test for ceramic materials was assessed by Scf parameter to verify the usefulness of the proposed Scf parameter. Friction and wear tests were carried out with ball on disk type. The materials used in this study were HIPed Alumina $(Al_2O_3)$, Silicon carbide (sic), Silicon nitride $(Si_3N_4)$ and Zirconia $(ZrO_2)$. The tests were carried out at room temperature with self mated couples of ceramic materials under lubricated condition. Turbine oil was used as a lubricant. In this test, increasing the load, specific wear rates and wear coefficients of four kinds of ceramic materials had a tendency to increase. The wear coefficients of ceramic materials were in order of $Al_2O_3, SiC, Si_3N_4, ZrO_2$. Worn surfaces investigated by SEM had residual surface cracks and wear particles caused by brittle fracture. As the fracture toughness of ceramic materials was higher, wear resistance more increased. The roughness of worn surface had correlation with wear rate. The wear rate(W$_{s}$) and Scf parameter showed linear relationship in log-log coordinates and the wear equation was given as $W_s = 5.52 $\times$ Scf^{5.01}$.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.253-261
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• 2004

The machining technology for the brittle materials such as ceramics are applied to the fields of MEMS(micro electromechanical system) by the progress of new machining technologies such as Etching, Diamond machining, Micro drilling, EDM(Electro discharge machining), ECDM(Electro discharge machining), USM(Ultrasonic machining), LBM(Laser beam machining), EBM(Electron beam machining). Especially, the USM technology can be applied to the dieletric brittle materials such as silicon, borosilicate glass, silicon nitride, quartz and ceramics with high aspect ratio. The micro machining system with machining force controlled position servo is developed in this paper and the optimized ultrasonic machining algorithm is constructed by the force controlled position servo control. The load cell is adapted in the force measuring and the servo control algorithm, suit for the ultrasonic machining characteristics, is estabilished with using the PID auto-tunning functions at the PMAC system which is generally adapted in the field of robot industries. The precision force signal amplifier is constructed with high precision operational amplifier AD524. The vacuum adsorption chuck which is made of titanum and internal flow line is engraved, is used in the workpiece fixing. The mahining results by USM shows that there are some deviation between the force command and the actual machining force that the servo control algorithm should be applied in the machining procedures. Therefore, the constant force controlled position servo system is developed for the micro USM system and by the examination machining process in USM, the stable USM system is realized by tracking the average value of machining force.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.520-528
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• 1996

Four point bending tests of the brazed joint composed of sintered silicon nitride and 0.2% carbon steel with Cusil ABA filler which were fabricated at 86$0^{\circ}C$ were performed at temperatures, 25, 100, 200, 300, 400, 50$0^{\circ}C$ From the experiments, the maximum bending strength was measured at 30$0^{\circ}C$ From the 3D FE analysis of the residual stress of the brazed joint, it was revealed that the thermally induced residual stresses were minimized when the environmental temperature was 35$0^{\circ}C$ Considering the degradation of the filler material at high temperatures, it was calculated that the maximum bending strength of the brazed joint occured just below the temperature of the minimum thermal residual stress and the thermal residual stress was the dominative parameter of the brazed joint.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.1065-1071
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• 2002

The friction and wear behaviors of magnetron sputtered MoS$_2$ films were investigated through the use of a pin and disk type tester. The experiments were performed for two kinds of specimens (ground (Ra 0.5 $\mu\textrm{m}$) and polished (Ra 0.01 $\mu\textrm{m}$) substrates) under the following operating condifions : linear sliding velocities in the range of 22～66 mm/s (3 types), normal loads varying from 9.8～29.4 N(3 types) and atmospheric conditions of air, medium and high vacuum (3types). Silicon nitride pin was used as the lower specimen and magnetron sputtered MoS$_2$ on bearing steel disk was used as the upper specimen. The results showed that low friction property of the MoS$_2$ films could be identified in high vacuum and the specific wear rate in air was much higher than that in medium and high vacuum due to severe oxidation. It was found that the main wear mechanism in air was oxidation whereas in high vacuum accumulation of plastic flow and adhesion, were the main causes of wear.