• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.35.1-35.1
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• 2011

New photovoltaic (PV) materials and manufacturing approaches are needed for meeting the demand for lower-cost solar cells. The prototypal thin-film photovoltaic absorbers (CdTe and $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$) can achieve solar conversion efficiencies of up to 20% and are now commercially available, but the presence of toxic (Cd,Se) and expensive elemental components (In, Te) is a real issue as the demand for photovoltaics rapidly increases. To overcome these limitations, there has been substantial interest in developing viable alternative materials, such as $Cu_2ZnSnS_4$ (CZTS) is an emerging solar absorber that is structurally similar to CIGS, but contains only earth abundant, non-toxic elements and has a near optimal direct band gap energy of 1.4~1.6 ev and a large absorption coefficient of ${\sim}10^4\;cm^{-1}$. The CZTS absorber layers are grown and investigated by various fabrication methods, such as thermal evaporation, e-beam evaporation with a post sulfurization, sputtering, non-vacuum sol-gel, pulsed laser, spray-pyrolysis method and electrodeposition technique. In the present work, we report an alternative method for large area deposition of CZTS thin films that is potentially high throughput and inexpensive when used to produce monolithically integrated solar panel modules. Specifically, we have developed an aqueous chemical approach based on chemical bath deposition (CBD) with a subsequent sulfurization heat treatment. Samples produced by our method were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, absorbance and photoluminescence. The results show that this inexpensive and relatively benign process produces thin films of CZTS exhibiting uniform composition, kesterite crystal structure, and good optical properties. A preliminary solar cell device was fabricated to demonstrate rectifying and photovoltaic behavior.

• Proceedings of the KAIS Fall Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.110-114
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• 2010

Li-incorporated mesoporous $TiO_2$ materials with various pore-sized istributions were synthesized by using triblockcopolymers via a sol-gel process in a queous solution. The properties of the se materials were characterized by HR-TEM, XRD, and BET analysis. All particles have spherical morphology with a diameterrange of $1-3{\mu}m$. The mesoporous $TiO_2$ materials calcined at $400^{\circ}C$ and their specific surface area, average pore size and crystallite sizes were 210 $m^2g^{-1}$, 6.4 nm and 8.8 nm respectively. The Li-incorporated mesoporous $TiO_2$ were tested for $CO_2$ adsorption and its adsorption capacity is 90mg/g. The Li-incorporated mesoporous $TiO_2$ ar eobserved to be thermally stable, recyclable and greens or bent for $CO_2$ capture. The effect of bimetallic $ZrLiTiO_2$ is also studied for $CO_2$ adsorption.

• Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.217-222
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• 1998

Coating films of $SiO_2-TiO_2-AgO$ have been prepared on soda-lime-silica slide glasses and single crystal silicon wafer by the sol-gel method using a spin-coating technique. Commercially available tetraethyl orthosilicate, titanium trichloride, and silver-nitrates were used as starting materials. The heat treatment temperature of this coating films was $500^{\circ}C$ properly, obtained from TG-DTA result. The films with thickness of 310 nm were prepared by 5 times coating. In the case of l0 mol% AgO, the film showed a crack-free and smooth surface, but the higher Ago content exhibited the more pin hole and the segregated cluster of AgO. The IR absorbance of the films decreased in the range of 400 nm to 700 nm with the increase of annealing temperature. And the reflectance of the coating films decreased and the color was changed light yellow to white yellow with the increase of Ago content.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.288-288
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• 2013

We report the catalytic activity of Au/$TiO_2$ and Pt/$TiO_2$ nanocatalysts under CO oxidation fabricated by arc plasma deposition (APD), which is a facile dry process with no organic materials involved. Using APD, the catalyst nanoparticles were well dispersed on $TiO_2$ powder with an average particle size (2~4 nm) well below that of nanoparticles prepared by the sol-gel method (10 nm). We found that the average particle size of the dispersed gold nanoparticles can be controlled by changing the plasma discharge voltage of APD. Accordingly, the amount of loaded gold on the $TiO_2$ powder increased with increasing discharge voltage, but the specific surface area of the Au/$TiO_2$ samples decreased. As for catalytic reactivity, Au/$TiO_2$ showed a higher catalytic activity than Pt/$TiO_2$ in CO oxidation. The catalytic activity of the Au/$TiO_2$ samples showed size dependence where higher catalytic activity occurred on smaller gold nanoparticles. The study suggests that APD is a simple way to fabricate catalytically active nanocatalysts.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.32-38
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• 2006

A series of organic-inorganic hybrids, PCL/EP/$SiO_2$, involving epoxy resin and triethoxysilane-terminated polycaprolactone elastomer (PCL-TESi) were prepared via polymerization of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) with amine curing agent KB-2 and sol-gel process of PCL-TESi. The curing reactions were started from the initially homogeneous mixture of DGEBA, KB-2 and the PCL-TESi. The organicinorganic hybrids containing up to 4.95% (wt) of $SiO_2$ were obtained and characterized by FT-IR, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetry analysis (TGA). It was experimentally shown that the swelling property in toluene, morphologies and thermal properties of the resulting hybrids were quite dependent on the contents of $SiO_2$. The crosslink network density decreases with increasing of the PCL-TESi. And in TEM, the phase separated morphology of these hybrids was found, which resulted from the coagulation of Si-O-Si networks resulting from $-Si(OC_2H_5)_3$ of PCL-TESi self-curing by hydrolytic silanol condensation, with the advancement of the curing reaction in the modified epoxy resin systems. Meanwhile, the change of the $SiO_2$ content made the morphologies changed from aggregated particles of Si-O-Si in the hybrid to nanocluster of interconnected Si-O-Si particles, then to aggregated Si-O-Si dispersing in the continuous cured epoxy phase again, and last to co-continuous interpenetrating network. The glass transition behavior of the hybrid material was cooperative motion of large chain segments, which were hindered by the inorganic Si-O-Si network. And in TG analysis, the characteristic temperature at 5% of weight loss was evidently increased from $120.5^{\circ}C$ of pure cured epoxy to $277.6^{\circ}C$ of 3.84% (wt) of $SiO_2$ modified epoxy due to the existence of Si-O-Si when PCL-TESi was added in the hybrid.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.67-71
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• 2011

La doped CuO-ZnO-$Al_2O_3$ powders are prepared by sol-gel method with aluminum isopropoxide and primary distilled water as precursor and solvent. In this synthesized process, the obtained metal oxides caused the precursor such as copper (II) nitrate hydrate and zinc (II) nitrate hexahydrate were added. To improve the surface areas of La doped CuO-ZnO-$Al_2O_3$ powder, sorbitan (z)-mono-9-octadecenoate (Span 80) was added. The synthesized powder was calcined at various temperatures. The dopant was found to affect the surface area and particle size of the mixed oxide, in conjunction with the calcined temperature. The structural analysis and textual properties of the synthesized powder were measured with an X-ray Diffractometer (XRD), a Field-Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM), Bruner-Emmett-Teller surface analysis (BET), Thermogravimetry-Differential Thermal analysis (TG/DTA), $^{27}Al$ solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and transform infrared microspectroscopy (FT-IR). An increase of surface area with Span 80 was observed on La doped CuO-ZnO-$Al_2O_3$ powders from $25m^2$/g to $41m^2$/g.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.12 no.1 s.34
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• pp.21-26
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• 2005

The field effect transistors (FETs) were fabricated ell $Y_2O_3/Si(100)$ substrates by the conventional memory processes and sol-gel process using $(Bi,La)Ti_3O_{12}(BLT)$ ferroelectric gate materials. The remnant polarization ($2Pr = Pr^+-Pr^-$) int Pt/BLT/Pt/Si capacitors increased from $22 {\mu}C/cm^2$ to $30{\mu}C/ cm^2$ at 5V as the annealing temperature increased from $700^{\circ}C$ to $750^{\circ}C$. There was no drastic degradation in the polarization values after applying the retention read pulse for $10^{5.5}$ seconds. The capacitance-voltage data of $Pt/BLT/Y_2O_3/Si$ capacitors at 5V input voltage showed that the memory window voltage decreased from 1.4V to 0.6V as the annealing temperature increased from $700^{\circ}C$ to $750^{\circ}C$. The leakage current of the $Pt/BLT/Y_2O_3/Si$ capacitors annealed at $750^{\circ}C$ was about $510^{-8}A/cm^2$ at 5V. From the drain currents versus gate voltages ($V_G$) for $Pt/BLT/Y_2O_3/Si(100)$ FET devices, the memory window voltages increased from 0.3V to 0.8V with increasing tile $V_G$ from 3V to 5V.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.2671-2676
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• 2011

Nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ spherical particle (NP) with a dimension of 5 ${\times}$ 5.5 nm and several nanorods (NR) with different aspect ratios (diameter ${\times}$ length: 5 ${\times}$ 8.5, 4 ${\times}$ 15, 4 ${\times}$ 18 and 3.5 ${\times}$ 22 nm) were selectively synthesized by a solvothermal process combined with non-hydrolytic sol-gel reaction. With varying the molar ratio of TTIP to oleic acid from 1:1 to 1:16, the NRs in the pure anatase phase were elongated to the c-axis direction. The prepared NP and NRs were applied for the formation of nanoporous $TiO_2$ layers in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). Among them, NR2 ($TiO_2$ nanorod with 4 ${\times}$ 15 nm) exhibited the highest cell performance: Its photovoltaic conversion efficiency (${\eta}$) of 6.07%, with $J_{sc}$ of 13.473 mA/$cm^2$, $V_{oc}$ of 0.640 V, and FF of 70.32%, was 1.44 times that of NP with a size of 5 ${\times}$ 5.5 nm. It was observed from the transient photoelectron spectroscopy and the incident photon to current conversion efficiency (IPCE) spectra that the $TiO_2$ films derived from NR2 demonstrate the longest electron diffusion length ($L_e$) and the highest external quantum efficiency (EQE).

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.142-147
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• 2007

In this study, mesoporous tin oxide was synthesized by sol-gel method using $C_{16}TMABr$ surfactant as a template in a basic condition. The optimum conditions for the synthesis of mesoporous $SnO_2$ were investigated and the obtained samples were characterized by XRD, nitrogen adsorption and TEM analysis. A mesoporous and nanostructured $SnO_2$ gas sensor with Au electrode and Pt heater has been fabricated on alumina substrate as one unit via a screen printing process. Sensing abilities of fabricated sensors were examined for CO and $CH_4$ gases, respectively, at $350^{\circ}C$ in the concentration range of 1~10,000 ppm. Influence of loading amount of palladium impregnated on $SnO_2$ was also tested in detection of those gases. High sensitivity to detecting gases and the fast response speed with stability were obtained with the mesoporous tin oxide sensor as compared to a non-porous one under the same detection conditions.

• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.529-535
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• 2020

The present study investigated the photodegradation of synthetic organic dye; violet-3B, without and with the addition of C-N-codoped TiO₂ catalyst using a visible halogen-lamp as a light source. The catalyst was synthesized by using a peroxo sol-gel method with free-organic solvent. The effects of initial dye concentration, catalyst dosage, and pH solution on the photodegradation of violet-3B were examined. The efficiency of the photodegradation process for violet-3B dye was higher at neutral to less acidic pH. The kinetics reaction rate of photodegradation of violet-3B dye with the addition of C-N-codoped TiO₂ followed pseudo-first order kinetics represented by the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model, and increasing the initial concentration of dyes decreased rate constants of photodegradation. Photodegradation of 5 mg L^-1 violet-3B dye achieved 96% color removal within 240 min of irradiation in the presence of C-N-codoped TiO₂ catalyst, and approximately 44% TOC was removed as a result of the mineralization.