• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2013.08a
• /
• pp.319.1-319.1
• /
• 2013

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have been recognized as one of emerging renewable energy sources, due to minimized pollutant production and high efficiency in operation. The performance of SOFCs is largely dependent on the electrode polarization which involves the oxidation/reduction in cathodes and anodes along with the charge transport of ions and electronic carriers. Atomic layer deposition is based on the alternate chemical surface reaction occurring at low temperatures with high uniformity and superior step coverage. Such features can be extended into the coating of metal oxide and/or metal layer onto the porous materials. In particular, the atomic layer deposition is can manipulated in controlling the charge transport in terms of triple phase boundaries, in order to control artificially the electrochemical polarization in electrodes of SOFC. The current work applied atomic layer deposition of metal oxides intro the electrodes of SOFCs. The corresponding effect was monitored in terms of the electrochemical characterization. The roles of atomic layer deposition in solid oxide fuel cells are discussed towards optimized towards long-term durability at intermediate temperature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 1999.07a
• /
• pp.98-98
• /
• 1999

Highly transparent and conducting tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) films were deposited on polycarbonate substrate by ion-assited deposition. Low substrate temperature (<10$0^{\circ}C$) was maintained during deposition to prevent the polycarbonate substrate from be deformed. The influence of ion beam energy, ion current density, and tin doping, on the structural, electrical and optical properties of deposited films was investigated. Indium oxide and tin-doped indium oxide (9 wt% SnO2) sources were evaporated with assisting ionized oxygen in high vacuum chamber at a pressure of 2$\times$10-5 torr and deposition temperature was varied from room temperature to 10$0^{\circ}C$. Oxygen gas was ionized and accelerated by cold hallow-cathode type ion gun at oxygen flow rate of 1 sccm(ml/min). Ion bea potential and ion current of oxygen ions was changed from 0 to 700 V and from 0.54 to 1.62 $\mu$A. The change of microstructure of deposited films was examined by XRD and SEM. The electrical resistivity and optical transmittance were measured by four-point porbe and conventional spectrophotometer. From the results of spectrophotometer, both the refractive index and the extinction coefficient were derived.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.08a
• /
• pp.222-222
• /
• 2011

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has a number of applications in optics and electronics due to its superior properties, such as physical and chemical stability, high refractive index, good transmission in vis and NIR regions, and high dielectric constant. Atomic layer deposition (ALD), also called atomic layer epitaxy, can be regarded as a special modification of the chemical vapor deposition method. ALD is a pulsed method in which the reactant vapors are alternately supplied onto the substrate. During each pulse, the precursors chemisorb or react with the surface groups. When the process conditions are suitably chosen, the film growth proceeds by alternate saturative surface reactions and is thus self-limiting. This makes it possible to cover even complex shaped objects with a uniform film. It is also possible to control the film thickness accurately simply by controlling the number of pulsing cycles repeated. We have investigated the ALD of TiO2 at 100$^{\circ}C$ using precursors titanium tetra-isopropoxide (TTIP) and H2O on -O, -OH terminated Si surface by in situ X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. ALD reactions with TTIP were performed on the H2O-dosed Si substrate at 100$^{\circ}C$, where one cycle was completed. The number of ALD cycles was increased by repeated deposition of H2O and TTIP at 100$^{\circ}C$. After precursor exposure, the samples were transferred under vacuum from the reaction chamber to the UHV chamber at room temperature for in situ XPS analysis. The XPS instrument included a hemispherical analyzer (ALPHA 110) and a monochromatic X-ray source generated by exciting Al K${\alpha}$ radiation (h${\nu}$=1486.6 eV).

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
• /
• v.54 no.2
• /
• pp.53-61
• /
• 2021

The properties of tetrahedral amorphous Carbon (ta-C) film can be determined by multiple parameters and comprehensive effects of those parameters during a deposition process with filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA). In this study, Taguchi method was adopted to design the optimized FCVA deposition process of ta-C for improving deposition efficiency and mechanical properties of the deposited ta-C thin film. The influence and contribution of variables, such as arc current, substrate bias voltage, frequency, and duty cycle, on the properties of ta-C were investigated in terms of deposition efficiency and mechanical properties. It was revealed that the deposition rate was linearly increased following the increasing arc current (around 10 nm/min @ 60 A and 17 nm/min @ 100A). The hardness and I_D/I_G showed a correlation with substrate bias voltage (over 30 GPa @ 50 V and under 30 GPa @ 250 V). The scratch tests were conducted to specify the effect of each parameter on the resistance to plastic deformation of films. The analysis on variances showed that the arc current and substrate bias voltage were the most effective controlling parameters influencing properties of ta-C films. The optimized parameters were extracted for the target applications in various industrial fields.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2012.08a
• /
• pp.374-374
• /
• 2012

Nowadays, Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (AM-OLEDs) are the superior display device due to their vivid full color, perfect video capability, light weight, low driving power, and potential flexibility. One of the advantages of AM-OLED over Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) lies in its flexibility. The potential flexibility of AM-OLED is not fully explored due to its sensitivity to moisture and oxygen which are readily present in atmosphere, and there are no flexible encapsulation layers available to protect these. Therefore, we come up with a new concept of Inorganic-Organic hybrid thin film as the encapsulation layer. Our Inorganic layer is Al2O3 and Organic layer is F-Alucone. We deposited these layers in vacuum state using Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and Molecular Layer Deposition (MLD) techniques. We found the results are comparable to commercial requirement of 10-6 g/m2 day for Water Vapor Transmission Rate (WVTR). Using ALD and MLD, we can control the exact thin film thickness and fabricate more dense films than chemical or physical vapor deposition methods. Moreover, this hybrid encapsulation layer potentially has both the flexibility of organic layers and superior protection properties of inorganic layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.329-329
• /
• 2011

We investigated the thin films of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and C61-butyric acid methylester (PCBM) prepared by ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) electrospray depositioin (ESD) by using in-situ XPS, UPS and ambient-pressure AFM. The morphology, chemical structures, and interface properties of these materials, most widely used for bulk heterojunction organic solar cells, were studied depending on the ESD solution compositions and concentrations. We found that the solution conductivity and flow rate as well as applied voltage are the important parameters for stable electrospray and film formation. These results suggest that UHV ESD is a viable method for the deposition of multilayers of polymers under UHV condition. We also discuss the energy level alignment for the various deposition conditions at the interface, which is one of the most important operating parameters of the bulk heterojunction organic solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.351-351
• /
• 2011

Graphene has drawn great interests because of its distinctive band structure and physical properties[1]. A few of the practical applications envisioned for graphene include semiconductor applications, optoelectronics (sola cell, touch screens, liquid crystal displays), and graphene based batteries/super-capacitors [2-3]. Recent work has shown that excellent electronic properties are exhibited by large-scale ultrathin graphite films, grown by chemical vapor deposition on a polycrystalline metal and transferred to a device-compatible surface[4]. In this paper, we focussed our scope for the understanding the graphene growth at different conditions, which enables to control the growth towards the application aimed. The graphene was grown using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with methane and hydrogen gas in vacuum furnace system. The grown graphene was characterized using a scanning electron microscope(SEM) and Raman spectroscopy. We changed the growth temperature from 900 to $1050^{\circ}C$ with various gas flow rate and composition rate. The growth condition for larger domain will be discussed.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
• /
• v.17 no.5
• /
• pp.574-580
• /
• 2013

In this paper, The process of thin-film coating technology was applied to improve adhesion of the hardness thin film and nitride layer. This thin-film coating technology have formed composite thin-film to gain hardness and toughness used in press mold. The thin-film coating manufacturing technology increased vacuum present in the vacuum chamber and improved the throw ratio of the gun power using physical vapor deposition coating technology. Ti alloys target improved performance and surface material through the development of a composite film coating technology for various precision machining parts.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.21 no.12
• /
• pp.331-336
• /
• 2021

Vacuum metal deposition(VMD) using gold and zinc is known as a very sensitive technique of developing latent fingerprints on nonporous surfaces by excellent malleability and ductility of gold. However, VMD produces empty print which cannot be identified. There is only presumption about the cause of occurrence of empty print, the exact cause is not known. In this study, we experiment on the freshness of fingerprints and sensitivity of techniques that are estimated as the factors causing empty print, based on this, we suggest cyanoacrylate fuming is effective to redevelop empty print.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.204-205
• /
• 2011

In thin film silicon solar cells, p-i-n structure is adopted instead of p/n junction structure as in wafer-based Si solar cells. PECVD is a most widely used thin film deposition process for a-Si:H or ${\mu}c$-Si:H solar cells. For best performance of thin film silicon solar cell, the dopant profiles at p/i and i/n interfaces need to be as sharp as possible. The sharpness of dopant profiles can easily achieved when using multi-chamber PECVD equipment, in which each layer is deposited in separate chamber. However, in a single-chamber PECVD system, doped and intrinsic layers are deposited in one plasma chamber, which inevitably impedes sharp dopant profiles at the interfaces due to the contamination from previous deposition process. The cross-contamination between layers is a serious drawback of a single-chamber PECVD system in spite of the advantage of lower initial investment cost for the equipment. In order to resolve the cross-contamination problem in single-chamber PECVD systems, flushing method of the chamber with NH3 gas or water vapor after doped layer deposition process has been used. In this study, a new plasma process to solve the cross-contamination problem in a single-chamber PECVD system was suggested. A single-chamber VHF-PECVD system was used for superstrate type p-i-n a-Si:H solar cell manufacturing on Asahi-type U FTO glass. A 80 MHz and 20 watts of pulsed RF power was applied to the parallel plate RF cathode at the frequency of 10 kHz and 80% duty ratio. A mixture gas of Ar, H2 and SiH4 was used for i-layer deposition and the deposition pressure was 0.4 Torr. For p and n layer deposition, B2H6 and PH3 was used as doping gas, respectively. The deposition temperature was $250^{\circ}C$ and the total p-i-n layer thickness was about $3500{\AA}$. In order to remove the deposited B inside of the vacuum chamber during p-layer deposition, a high pulsed RF power of about 80 W was applied right after p-layer deposition without SiH4 gas, which is followed by i-layer and n-layer deposition. Finally, Ag was deposited as top electrode. The best initial solar cell efficiency of 9.5 % for test cell area of 0.2 $cm^2$ could be achieved by applying the in-situ plasma cleaning method. The dependence on RF power and treatment time was investigated along with the SIMS analysis of the p-i interface for boron profiles.