• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.448-448
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• 2010

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) has made a prominent progress in memory performance and has brought a bright prospect for the next generation nonvolatile memory technologies due to its excellent advantages. Dry etching process of magnetic thin films is one of the important issues for the magnetic devices such as magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) based MRAM. CoFeB is a well-known soft ferromagnetic material, of particular interest for magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) and other devices based on tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR), such as spin-transfer-torque MRAM. One particular example is the CoFeB - MgO - CoFeB system, which has already been integrated in MRAM. In all of these applications, knowledge of control over the etching properties of CoFeB is crucial. Recently, transferring the pattern by using milling is a commonly used, although the redeposition of back-sputtered etch products on the sidewalls and the low etch rate of this method are main disadvantages. So the other method which has reported about much higher etch rates of >$50{\AA}/s$ for magnetic multi-layer structures using $Cl_2$/Ar plasmas is proposed. However, the chlorinated etch residues on the sidewalls of the etched features tend to severely corrode the magnetic material. Besides avoiding corrosion, during etching facets format the sidewalls of the mask due to physical sputtering of the mask material. Therefore, in this work, magnetic material such as CoFeB was etched in an ICP etching system using the gases which can be expected to form volatile metallo-organic compounds. As the gases, carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia ($NH_3$) were used as etching gases to form carbonyl volatiles, and the etched features of CoFeB thin films under by Ta masking material were observed with electron microscopy to confirm etched resolution. And the etch conditions such as bias power, gas combination flow, process pressure, and source power were varied to find out and control the properties of magnetic layer during the process.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.27 no.12
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• pp.871-876
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• 2014

Efficiency of crystalline Si solar cell can be maximized as minimizing optical loss through antireflection texturing with inverted pyramids. Even if cost-competitive, soft lithography can be employed instead of photolithography for the purpose, some limitations still remain to apply the soft lithography directly to as-received solar grade wafer with a bunch of micro trenches on surface. Therefore, it is needed to develop a low-cost, effective planarization process and evaluate its output to be applicable to patterning process with PDMS stamp. In this study new surface planarization process is proposed and the change of micro scale trenches on the surface as a function of etching time is observed. Also, the effect of trenches on pattern quality by soft lithography is investigated using FEM structural analysis. In conclusion it is clear that the geometry and shape of trenches would be basic considerations for soft lithography application to low quality wafer.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.53-56
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• 2008

This study proposes a simple nano-patterning process for the fabrication of magnetic nanodot arrays on a large area substrate. Ni nanodots were fabricated on a large area (4 inches in diameter) Si substrate using the soft lithographic technique using self-assembled surface micelles of Polystyrene-block-Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PS-b-PMMA) diblock copolymer formed at the air/water interface as a mask. The hexagonal array of micelles was successfully transferred to a Ni thin film on a Si substrate using the Langmuir-Blodgett technique. After ion-mill dry etching, a magnetic Ni nanodot array with a regular hexagon array structure was obtained. The Ni nanodot array showed in-plane easy axis magnetization and typical soft magnetic properties.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.410.1-410.1
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• 2014

A soft-lithographic top-down approach is combined with an epitaxial layer transfer process to fabricate high quality III-V compound semiconductor nanowires (NWs) and integrate them on Si/SiO2 substrates, using MBE-grown ultrathin InAs as a source wafer. The channel width of the InAs nanowires is controlled by using solvent-assisted nanoscale embossing (SANE), descumming, and etching processes. By optimizing these processes, the NW width is scaled to less than 50 nm, and the InAs NWFETs has ${\sim}1,600cm^2/Vs$ peak electron mobility, which indicates no mobility degradation due to the size.

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.13-14
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• 2006

The use of soft-lithography instead of standard photolithography and dry etching technologies is attractive because inexpensive optical device can be realized. Polymerization using multi-photon absorption of materials is also a good method for optical waveguide fabrication. Laser induced self-writing technology of optical waveguide is also very simple and attractive. Using these processes, we can fabricate and interconnect optical circuits at once. In this presentation, several simple fabrication methods will be introduced. New optical loss evaluation method for polymer optical waveguides will also be presented

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.83-89
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• 2012

Due to the potential importance and usefulness, usage of highly ordered nanoporous anodized aluminum oxide can be broadened in industry, when highly ordered anodized aluminum oxide can be placed on a substrate with controlled thickness. Here we report a facile route to highly ordered nanoporous alumina with the thickness of hundreds-of-nanometer on a silicon wafer substrate. Hexagonally or tetragonally ordered nanoporous alumina could be prepared by way of thermal imprinting, dry etching, and anodization. Adoption of reusable polymer soft molds enabled the control of the thickness of the highly ordered porous alumina. It also increased reproducibility of imprinting process and reduced the expense for mold production and pattern generation. As nanoporous alumina templates are mechanically and thermally stable, we expect that the simple and costeffective fabrication through our method would be highly applicable in electronics industry.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.562-565
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• 2013

The high purity Al foil, which has an enlarged surface area by electrochemical etching process, has been used as an anode for an aluminum electrolytic capacitor. Etch pits are randomly distributed on the surface because of the existence of surface irregularities such as impurity and random nucleation of pits. Even though a large surface area was formed on the tunnel-etched Al, its applications to various fields were limited due to non-uniform tunnel morphologies. In this work, the selective electrochemical etching of aluminum was carried out by using a patterned mask fabricated by photolithographic method. The formation of etch pits with uniform distribution has been demonstrated by the optimization of experimental conditions such as current density and etching solution temperature.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.300-306
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• 2010

Superhydrophobic micro-nano hybrid structures were fabricated by reactive ion etching of hydrophobic polymer micro patterns using gold nanoparticles as etch masks. Micro structures of perfluoropolyether bisurethane methacrylate (PFPE) were prepared by soft-lithographic technique using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) molds. Water contact angles on the surfaces of various PFPE micro structures and corresponding micro-nano hybrid structures were compared to examine the effects of micro patterning and nanostructure formation in the manifestation of superhydrophobicity. The PFPE micro-nano hybrid structures exhibited a very stable superhydrophobicity, while the micro-only structures could not reach the superhydrophobicity but only showed the unstable hydrophobicity.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.16.1-16.1
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• 2011

$TiO_2$ is a promising material for gas sensors. To achieve high sensitivities, the material should exhibit a large surface-to-volume ratio and possess the high accessibility of the gas molecules to the surface. Accordingly, a wide variety of porous $TiO_2$ nanomaterials synthesized by wet-chemical methods have been reported for gas sensor applications. Nonetheless, achieving the large-area uniformity and comparability with well-established semiconductor production processes of the methods is still challenging. An alternative method is soft-templating which utilizes nanostructured inorganic or organic materials as sacrificial templates for the preparation of porous materials. Fabrication of macroporous $TiO_2$ films and hollow $TiO_2$ tubes by soft-templating and their gas sensing applications have been reported recently. In these porous materials composed of assemblies of individual micro/nanostructures, the form of links or necks between individual micro/nanostructures is a critical factor to determine gas sensing properties of the material. However, a systematic study to clarify the role of links between individual micro/nanostructures in gas sensing properties of a porous metal oxide matrix is thoroughly lacking. In this work, we have demonstrated a fabrication method to prepare highly-ordered, embossed $TiO_2$ films composed of anatase $TiO_2$ hollow hemispheres via soft-templating using polystyrene beads. The form of links between hollow hemispheres could be controlled by $O_2$ plasma etching on the bead templates. This approach reveals the strong correlation of gas sensitivity with the form of the links. Our experimental results highlight that not only the surface-to-volume ratio of an ensemble material composed of individual micro/nanostructures but also the links between individual micro/nanostructures play a critical role in evaluating the sensing properties of the material. In addition to this general finding, the facileness, large-scale productivity, and compatability with semiconductor production process of the proposed fabrication method promise applications of the embossed $TiO_2$ films to high-quality sensors.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.31 no.11
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• pp.969-974
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• 2014

Previously fabricated electronic devices were used for vacuum manufacturing processes such as conventional semiconductor manufacturing. However, they are difficult to apply to continuous processes such as roll-to-roll printing, which results in very high device manufacturing and processing costs. Therefore, many developers have been interested in applying continuous processes to contact printing or noncontact printing technologies and they proposed various continuous printing techniques instead of conventional batch coating. In this paper, we proposed improved gravure offset printing process as one of the contact printing technique. We used etching pattern geometry with soft core blanket roll for printing of ultra fine line below the 10um.Using this technique we obtained flexible metal grid mesh film as transparent conductive film.