• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.261-263
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• 2008

We attempted modulation of the hydrogen dilution ratio in a Cat-CVD system to achieve both the minimal incubation layer and the high throughput. We obtained the incubation layer thickness of 3 nm, and were able to grow a 200 nm-thick film having a 70 % crystallinity in 18 minutes.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.317-321
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• 2019

We investigated the characteristics of nano crystalline silicon(nc-Si) thin-film solar cells on graphite substrates. Amorphous silicon(a-Si) thin-film solar cells on graphite plates show low conversion efficiency due to high surface roughness, and many recombination by dangling bonds. In previous studies, we deposited barrier films by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD) on graphite plate to reduce surface roughness and achieved ~7.8 % cell efficiency. In this study, we fabricated nc-Si thin film solar cell on graphite in order to increase the efficiency of solar cells. We achieved 8.45 % efficiency on graphite plate and applied this to nc-Si on graphite sheet for flexible solar cell applications. The characterization of the cell is performed with external quantum efficiency(EQE) and current density-voltage measurements(J-V). As a result, we obtain ~8.42 % cell efficiency in a flexible solar cell fabricated on a graphite sheet, which performance is similar to that of cells fabricated on graphite plates.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.841-845
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• 2013

We give a textured front on silicon wafer for high-efficiency solar cells by using micro contact printing method which uses PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) silicon rubber as a stamp and SAM (self assembled monolayer)s as an ink. A random pyramidal texturing have been widely used for a front-surface texturing in low cost manufacturing line although the cell with random pyramids on front surface shows relatively low efficiency than the cell with inverted pyramids patterned by normal optical lithography. In the past two decades, the micro contact printing has been intensively studied in nano technology field for high resolution patterns on silicon wafer. However, this promising printing technique has surprisingly never applied so far to silicon based solar cell industry despite their simplicity of process and attractive aspects in terms of cost competitiveness. We employ a MHA (16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid) as an ink for Au deposited $SiO_2/Si$ substrate. The $SiO_2$ pattern which is same as the pattern printed by SAM ink on Au surface and later acts as a hard resist for anisotropic silicon etching was made by HF solution, and then inverted pyramidal pattern is formed after anisotropic wet etching. We compare three textured surface with different morphology (random texture, random pyramids and inverted pyramids) and then different geometry of inverted pyramid arrays in terms of reflectivity.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.313-320
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• 2011

100 nm-thick hydrogenated amorphous silicon $({\alpha}-Si:H)$ films were deposited on a glass and glass/30 nm Ni substrates by inductively-coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) at temperatures ranging from 100 to $550^{\circ}C$. The sheet resistance, microstructure, phase transformation and surface roughness of the films were characterized using a four-point probe, AFM (atomic force microscope), TEM (transmission electron microscope), AES (Auger electron spectroscopy), HR-XRD(high resolution X-ray diffraction), and micro-Raman spectroscopy. A nano-thick NiSi phase was formed at substrate temperatures >$400^{\circ}C$. AFM confirmed that the surface roughness did not change as the substrate temperature increased, but it increased abruptly to 6.6 nm above $400^{\circ}C$ on the glass/30 nm Ni substrates. HR-XRD and micro-Raman spectroscopy showed that all the Si samples were amorphous on the glass substrates, whereas crystalline silicon appeared at $550^{\circ}C$ on the glass/30 nm Ni substrates. These results show that crystalline NiSi and Si can be prepared simultaneously on Ni-inserted substrates.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.95-99
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• 2013

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thick films with a thickness of $10-20{\mu}m$ were fabricated on silicone substrates using an aerosol deposition method. The starting powder, which had diameters of $1-2{\mu}m$, was observed using SEM. The average diameter ($d_{50}$) was $1.1{\mu}m$. An XRD analysis showed a typical perovskite structure, a mixture of the tetragonal phase and rhombohedral phase. The as-deposited film with nano-sized grains had a fairly dense microstructure without any cracks. The deposited film showed a mixture of an amorphous phase and a very fine crystalline phase by diffraction pattern analysis using TEM. The as-deposited films on silicon were annealed at a temperature of $700^{\circ}C$. A 20-${\mu}m$ thick PZT film was torn out as a result of the high compressive stress between the PZT film and substrate.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.344-349
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• 2010

Silicon carbide nanowires were grown by heat treatment of the films at $1200^{\circ}C$ after amorphous SiC thin films were deposited on graphite substrate by radio frequency magnetron sputtering at $600^{\circ}C$. It was confirmed that SiC nanowires with the diameter of 20-60 nm and length of about 50nm were grown from Field Emission Scanning Election Microscope (FE-SEM) and Transmission Election Microscope (TEM) observation. The diameter of nanowires was increased as heat treatment time is increased. The nanowires were identified to ${\beta}$-SiC single crystalline from X-Ray Diffraction(XRD) analysis. It was observed from this study that deposition temperature of samples was critical to the crystallization of nanowires. On the other hand, the effect of deposition time was insignificant.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.261-279
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• 2017

Spectroscopic investigation of Si quantum dots (Si-QDs) embedded in silicon nitride was performed over a broad stoichiometry range to optimize light emission. Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition was used to grow the $SiN_x$ films on Si (001) substrates. The film composition was controlled via the flow ratio of silane ($SiH_4$) and ammonia ($NH_3$) in the range of R = 0.45-1.0 allowed to vary the Si excess in the range of 21-62 at.%. The films were submitted to annealing at $1100^{\circ}C$ for 30 min in nitrogen to form the Si-QDs. The properties of as-deposited and annealed films were investigated using spectroscopic ellipsometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman scattering and photoluminescence (PL) methods. Si-QDs were detected in $SiN_x$ films demonstrating the increase of sizes with Si excess. The residual amorphous Si clusters were found to be present in the films grown with Si excess higher than 50 at.%. Multi-component PL spectra at 300 K in the range of 1.5-3.5 eV were detected and nonmonotonous varying total PL peak versus Si excess was revealed. To identify the different PL components, the temperature dependence of PL spectra was investigated in the range of 20-300 K. The analysis allowed concluding that the "blue-orange" emission is due to the radiative defects in a $SiN_x$ matrix, whereas the "red" and "infrared" PL bands are caused by the exciton recombination in crystalline Si-QDs and amorphous Si clusters. The nature of radiative and no radiative defects in $SiN_x$ films is discussed. The ways to control the dominant PL emission mechanisms are proposed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.154-155
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• 2012

The promise of nano-crystalites (nc) as a technological material, for applications including display backplane, and solar cells, may ultimately depend on tailoring their behavior through doping and crystallinity. Impurities can strongly modify electronic and optical properties of bulk and nc semiconductors. Highly doped dopant also effect structural properties (both grain size, crystal fraction) of nc-Si thin film. As discussed in several literatures, P atoms or radicals have the tendency to reside on the surface of nc. The P-radical segregation on the nano-grain surfaces that called self-purification may reduce the possibility of new nucleation because of the five-coordination of P. In addition, the P doping levels of ${\sim}2{\times}10^{21}\;at/cm^3$ is the solubility limitation of P in Si; the solubility of nc thin film should be smaller. Therefore, the non-activated P tends to segregate on the grain boundaries and the surface of nc. These mechanisms could prevent new nucleation on the existing grain surface. Therefore, most researches shown that highly doped nc-thin film by using conventional PECVD deposition system tended to have low crystallinity, where the formation energy of nucleation should be higher than the nc surface in the intrinsic materials. If the deposition technology that can make highly doped and simultaneously highly crystallized nc at low temperature, it can lead processes of next generation flexible devices. Recently, we are developing a novel CVD technology with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, named as neutral beam assisted CVD (NBaCVD), which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at low temperatures. During the formation of the nc-/pm-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. In the case of phosphorous doped Si thin films, the doping efficiency also increased as increasing the reflector bias (i.e. increasing NPB energy). At 330V of reflector bias, activation energy of the doped nc-Si thin film reduced as low as 0.001 eV. This means dopants are fully occupied as substitutional site, even though the Si thin film has nano-sized grain structure. And activated dopant concentration is recorded as high as up to 1020 #/$cm^3$ at very low process temperature (＜ $80^{\circ}C$) process without any post annealing. Theoretical solubility for the higher dopant concentration in Si thin film for order of 1020 #/$cm^3$ can be done only high temperature process or post annealing over $650^{\circ}C$. In general, as decreasing the grain size, the dopant binding energy increases as ratio of 1 of diameter of grain and the dopant hardly be activated. The highly doped nc-Si thin film by low-temperature NBaCVD process had smaller average grain size under 10 nm (measured by GIWAXS, GISAXS and TEM analysis), but achieved very higher activation of phosphorous dopant; NB energy sufficiently transports its energy to doping and crystallization even though without supplying additional thermal energy. TEM image shows that incubation layer does not formed between nc-Si film and SiO2 under later and highly crystallized nc-Si film is constructed with uniformly distributed nano-grains in polymorphous tissues. The nucleation should be start at the first layer on the SiO2 later, but it hardly growth to be cone-shaped micro-size grains. The nc-grain evenly embedded pm-Si thin film can be formatted by competition of the nucleation and the crystal growing, which depend on the NPB energies. In the evaluation of the light soaking degradation of photoconductivity, while conventional intrinsic and n-type doped a-Si thin films appeared typical degradation of photoconductivity, all of the nc-Si thin films processed by the NBaCVD show only a few % of degradation of it. From FTIR and RAMAN spectra, the energetic hydrogen NB atoms passivate nano-grain boundaries during the NBaCVD process because of the high diffusivity and chemical potential of hydrogen atoms.