• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.16-16
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• 2010

GaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are attracting great interest as candidates for next-generation solid-state lighting, because of their long lifetime, small size, high efficacy, and low energy consumption. However, for general illumination applications, the external quantum efficiency of LEDs, determined by the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and the light extraction efficiency, must be further increased. The IQE is determined by crystal quality and epitaxial layer structure and high value of IQE more than 70% for blue LEDs have been already reported. However, there is much room for improvement of light extraction efficiency because most of the generated photons from active layer remain inside LEDs by total internal reflection at the interface of semiconductor with air due to the high refractive index difference between LEDs epilayer (for GaN, n=2.5) and air (n=1). The light confining in LEDs will be reabsorbed by the metal electrode or active layer, reducing the efficacy of LEDs. Here, we present the first demonstration of enhanced light extraction by forming a MgO nano-pyramids structure on the surface of vertical-LEDs. The MgO nano-pyramids structure was successfully fabricated at room temperature using conventional electron-beam evaporation without any additional process. The nano-sized pyramids of MgO are formed on the surface during growth due to anisotropic characteristics between (111) and (200) plane of MgO. The ZnO layer with quarter-wavelength in thickness is inserted between GaN and MgO layers to increase the critical angle for total internal reflection, because the refractive index of ZnO (n=1.94) could be matched between GaN (n=2.5) and MgO (n=1.73). The MgO nano-pyramids structure and ZnO refractive-index modulation layer enhanced the light extraction efficiency ofV-LEDs with by 49%, comparing with the V-LEDs with a flat n-GaN surface. The angular-dependent emission intensity shows the enhanced light extraction through the side walls of V-LEDs as well as through the top surface of the n-GaN, because of the increase in critical angle for total internal reflection as well as light scattering at the MgO nano-pyramids surface.

• Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Scientists of Korea
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.95-101
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• 2018

The epidermis which is stratified by epithelial tissue renewal based on keratinocyte differentiation protects the organism from various environmental insults by forming a physical barrier. Autophagy is a mechanism which mediates lysosomal delivery and degradation of protein aggregates, damaged organelles and intracellular microorganisms. Recent reports have shown that autophagy has critical roles for proper terminal differentiation to stratum corneum via removing metabolic organelles and nuclei. However, whether increasing autophagy can activate epidermal differentiation is unknown. Here, we screened a library of natural single compounds and discovered that betaine specifically increased the LC3 positive cytosolic punctate vesicles and LC3-I to LC3-II conversion in HaCaT human keratinocyte cell line, indicating increased autophagy flux. mTOR pathway, which negatively regulates autophagy, was not affected by betaine treatment, suggesting betaine-induced autophagy through an mTOR-independent pathway. Betaine-induced autophagy was also observed in primary human keratinocyte and skin equivalent. Furthermore, epidermal thickness was increased in skin equivalent under betaine treatment. Overall, our finding suggests that betaine as a novel regulator of autophagy may induce epidermal turnover and improve the skin barrier abnormality of the aged epidermis.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.196-208
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• 2007

An analytical model is proposed for an optically controlled Metal Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MESFET), known as Optical Field Effect Transistor (OPFET) considering the diffusion fabrication process. The electrical parameters such as threshold voltage, drain-source current, gate capacitances and switching response have been determined for the dark and various illuminated conditions. The Photovoltaic effect due to photogenerated carriers under illumination is shown to modulate the channel cross-section, which in turn significantly changes the threshold voltage, drainsource current, the gate capacitances and the device switching speed. The threshold voltage $V_T$ is reduced under optical illumination condition, which leads the device to change the device property from enhancement mode to depletion mode depending on photon impurity flux density. The resulting I-V characteristics show that the drain-source current IDS for different gate-source voltage $V_{gs}$ is significantly increased with optical illumination for photon flux densities of ${\Phi}=10^{15}\;and\;10^{17}/cm^2s$ compared to the dark condition. Further more, the drain-source current as a function of drain-source voltage $V_{DS}$ is evaluated to find the I-V characteristics for various pinch-off voltages $V_P$ for optimization of impurity flux density $Q_{Diff}$ by diffusion process. The resulting I-V characteristics also show that the diffusion process introduces less process-induced damage compared to ion implantation, which suffers from current reduction due to a large number of defects introduced by the ion implantation process. Further the results show significant increase in gate-source capacitance $C_{gs}$ and gate-drain capacitance $C_{gd}$ for optical illuminations, where the photo-induced voltage has a significant role on gate capacitances. The switching time ${\tau}$ of the OPFET device is computed for dark and illumination conditions. The switching time ${\tau}$ is greatly reduced by optical illumination and is also a function of device active layer thickness and corresponding impurity flux density $Q_{Diff}$. Thus it is shown that the diffusion process shows great potential for improvement of optoelectronic devices in quantum efficiency and other performance areas.

• Composites Research
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.183-189
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• 2014

Experimental considerations have been performed to obtain the clear optical microscopic images of graphene oxide which are useful to probe its quality and morphological information such as a shape, a size, and a thickness. In this study, we investigated the contrast enhancement of the optical images of graphene oxide after hydrazine vapor reduction on a Si substrate coated with a 300 nm-thick $SiO_2$ dielectric layer. Also, a green-filtered light source gave higher contrast images comparing to optical images under standard white light. Furthermore, it was found that a image channel separation technique can be an alternative to simply identify the morphological information of graphene oxide, where red, green, and blue color values are separated at each pixels of the optical image. The approaches performed in this study can be helpful to set up a simple and easy protocol for the morphological identification of graphene oxide using a conventional optical microscope instead of a scanning electron microscopy or an atomic force microscopy.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.618-624
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• 2013

We demonstrated unique inter- and intra-plasmonic coupling effects in bimetallic Au@Ag core-shell NP arrays which are regularly or randomly arranged on self-assembled block copolymer (BCP) inverse micelle monolayers. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)-stabilized Au@Ag core-shell NP arrays in regular or disordered configuration were incorporated and assembled on reconstructed PS-b-P4VP inverse micelle templates through two types of processes. The intensively enhanced LSPR coupling properties of individual and assembled Au@Ag NPs were evaluated by UV-visible spectroscopy in terms of the type of ligand stabilizer, coupling between Au and Ag, thickness of Ag shell, and type of array configuration. Finally, Au@Ag core-shell NP arrays were employed as active substrates for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and a significantly enhanced signal enhancement was observed in accordance with the coupling intensity of Au@Ag NPs patterns.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.155-163
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• 2011

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have been attracted much attention since they have been expected to be used in various areas by virtue of their outstanding physical, electrical, and chemical properties. In order to make full use of their prominent electric conductivity in some areas such as electron emission sources, device interconnects, and electrodes in energy storage devices, direct growth of CNT with vertical alignment is definitely beneficial issue because they can maintain mechanical stability and high conductivity at the interface between substrates. Here, we report direct growth of vertically aligned CNT (VCNT) on Cu foils using thermal chemical vapor deposition and characterize the field emission property of the VCNT. The VCNT's height was controlled by changing the growth temperature, growth time, and catalytic layer thickness. Optimum growth condition was found to be $800^{\circ}C$ for 20 min with acetylene and hydrogen mixtures on Fe catalytic layer of 1 nm thick. The diameter of VCNT grown was smaller than that of usual multi walled CNT. Based on the result of field emission characterization, we concluded that the VCNT on Cu foils can be useful in various potential applications where high conductivity through the interface between CNT and substrate is required.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.243-251
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• 1997

In this paper, we have reported two interesting flow effects arising in the TRFGE sequence using water flow phantom. First, we have shown that the TRFGE sequence is indeed not affected by "in-flow" effect from the unsaturated spins flowing into the imaging slice. Second, the enhancement of "in-plane flow" signal in the readout gradient direction was observed when the TRFGE sequence was used without flow compensation. These two results have many interesting applications in MR imaging other than fMRI. Results obtained were also compared with the results obtained by the conventional gradient echo(CGE) imaging. Experiments were performed at 4.7T MRI/S animal system (Biospec, BRUKER, Switzerland). A cylindrical phantom was made using acryl and a vinyl tube was inserted at the center(Fig. 1). The whole cylinder was filled with water doped with $MnCl_2$ and the center tube was filled with saline which flows in parallel to the main magnetic field along the tube. Tailored RF pulse was designed to have quadratic ($z^2$) phase distribution in slice direction(z). Imaging parameters were TR/TE = 55~85/10msec, flip angle = $30^{\circ}$, slice thickness = 2mm, matrix size = 256${\times}$256, and FOV= 10cm. In-flow effect : Axial images were obtained with and without flow using the CGE and TRFGE sequences, respectively. The flow direction was perpendicular to the image slice. In-plane flow : Sagittal images were obtained with and without flow using the TRGE sequence. The readout gradient was applied in parallel to the flow direction. We have observed that the "in-flow" effect did not affect the TRFGE image, while "in-plane flow" running along the readout gradient direction enhanced the signal in the TRFGE sequence when flow compensation gradient scheme was not used.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.314-325
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• 2000

Thermal degradation of thermoplasitc polyurethane modified polycarbonate has been investigated by means of DSC, GPC and FT-IR techniques. The polyurethanes used in this study are TPU-35 and TPU-53 containing 35.5 and 53.4 wt% of hard segments, respectively. The more content of hard segment, the higher the glass transition temperature (T$_{g}$) of TPU was observed. On the other hand, the T$_{g}$ of the TPU modified PC decreased with the content of TPU and the annealing temperature regardless of the hard segment contents. The latter behavior nay arise from the thermal degradation of TPU upon annealing process: the observed thermal degradation temperatures were at 240 and 25$0^{\circ}C$ for the PC/TPU-35 and PC/TPU-53, respectively. The molecular weight, molecular weight distribution and viscosity agree well with the DSC measurement, which implicates a thermal degradation of TPU. In addition, thermal stability of the TPU modified PC linearly decreased with an incorporation of TPU. Transesterification or any interaction was not observed using FT-IR: the evidence was no frequency shift or any variance betwere the carbonyl stretching and NH group. For the specimens prepared below the degradation temperature, the enhancement of the thickness dependent impact strength of the PC/TPU blend was observed, and the morphology of the two blends was compared.d.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.276-276
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• 2010

Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) has been explored recently as a promising approach to increase energy conversion efficiency in photovoltaic devices, particularly for thin film hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells. The LSPR is frequently excited via an electromagnetic (EM) radiation in proximate metallic nanostructures and its primary con sequences are selective photon extinction and local EM enhancement which gives rise to improved photogeneration of electron-hole (e-h) pairs, and consequently increases photocurrent. In this work, high-dielectric-constant (k) $ZrO_2$ (refractive index n=2.22, dielectric constant $\varepsilon=4.93$ at the wavelength of 550 nm) is proposed as spacing layer to enhance the LSPR for application to the thin film silicon solar cells. Compared to excitation of the LSPR using $SiO_2$ (n=1.46, $\varepsilon=2.13$ at the wavelength of 546.1 nm) spacing layer with Au nanoparticles of the radius of 45nm, that using $ZrO_2$ dielectric shows the advantages of(i) ~2.5 times greater polarizability, (ii) ~3.5 times larger scattering cross-section and ~1.5 times larger absorption cross-section, (iii) 4.5% higher transmission coefficient of the same thickness and (iv) 7.8% greater transmitted electric filed intensity at the same depth. All those results are calculated by Mie theory and Fresnel equations, and simulated by finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) calculations with proper boundary conditions. Red-shifting of the LSPR wavelength using high-k $ZrO_2$ dielectric is also observed according to location of the peak and this is consistent with the other's report. Finally, our experimental results show that variation of short-circuit current density ($J_{sc}$) of the LSPR enhanced a-Si:H solar cell by using the $ZrO_2$ spacing layer is 45.4% higher than that using the $SiO_2$ spacing layer, supporting our calculation and theory.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.193-199
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• 2019

In this study, we have proposed a floating metal guard ring structure based on TCAD simulation in order to enhance the breakdown voltage characteristics of gallium oxide ($Ga_2O_3$) vertical high voltage switching Schottky barrier diode. Unlike conventional guard ring structures, the floating metal guard rings do not require an ion implantation process. The locally enhanced high electric field at the anode corner was successfully suppressed by the metal guard rings, resulting in breakdown voltage enhancement. The number of guard rings and their width and spacing were varied for structural optimization during which the current-voltage characteristics and internal electric field and potential distributions were carefully investigated. For an n-type drift layer with a doping concentration of $5{\times}10^{16}cm^{-3}$ and a thickness of $5{\mu}m$, the optimum guard ring structure had 5 guard rings with an individual ring width of $1.5{\mu}m$ and a spacing of $0.2{\mu}m$ between rings. The breakdown voltage was increased from 940 V to 2000 V without degradation of on-resistance by employing the optimum guard ring structure. The proposed floating metal guard ring structure can improve the device performance without requiring an additional fabrication step.