In this study, we investigated the effect of annealing conditions on the ferromagnetic resonance(FMR) of yttrium iron garnet (Y3Fe5O12, YIG) thin film prepared on gadolinium gallium garnet (Gd3Ga5O12, GGG) substrate. The YIG thin films were grown by rf magnetron sputtering at room temperature and were annealed at various temperatures from 700 to 1000 ˚C. FMR characteristics of the YIG thin films were investigated with a coplanar waveguide FMR measurement system in a frequency range from 5 to 20 GHz. X-ray diffraction(XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) were used to characterize the phase formation, crystal structure and composition of the YIG thin films. Field dependent magnetization curves at room temperature were obtained by using a vibrating sample magnetometer(VSM). The FMR measurements revealed that the resonance magnetic field was highly dependent on the annealing condition: the lowest FMR linewidth can be observed for the 800 ˚C annealed sample, which agrees with the VSM results. We also found that the Fe and O composition changes during the annealing process play important roles in the observed magnetic properties.

In this study, we investigated localized surface plasmon resonance and the related coupling phenomena with respect to various geometric parameters of Ag nanoparticles, including the size and inter-particle distance. The plasmon resonances of Ag nanoparticles were studied using three-dimensional finite difference time domain(FDTD) calculations. From the FDTD calculations, we discovered the existence of a symmetric and an anti-symmetric plasmon coupling modes in the coupled Ag nanoparticles. The dependence of the resonance wavelength with respect to the inter-particle distance was also investigated, revealing that the anti-symmetric mode is more closely correlated with the inter-particle distance of the Ag nanoparticles than the symmetric mode. We also found that higher order resonance modes are appeared in the extinction spectrum for closely spaced Ag nanoparticles. Plasmon resonance calculations for the Ag particles coated with a SiO2 layer showed enhanced plasmon coupling due to the strengthened plasmon resonance, suggesting that the inter-particle distance of the Ag nanoparticles can be estimated by measuring the transmission and absorption spectra with the plasmon resonance of symmetric and anti-symmetric localized surface plasmons.

In this study, we have investigated highly efficient nanoscale surface corrugated light emitting diodes (LEDs) for the enhancement of light extraction efficiency (LEE) of nitride semiconductor LEDs. Nanoscale indium tin oxide (ITO) surface corrugations are fabricated by using the conformal nanoimprint technique; it was possible to observe an enhancement of LEE for the ITO surface corrugated LEDs. By incorporating this novel method, we determined that the total output power of the surface corrugated LEDs were enhanced by 45.6% for patterned sapphire substrate LEDs and by 41.9% for flat c-plane substrate LEDs. The enhancement of LEE through nanoscale surface corrugations was studied using 3-dimensional Finite Different Time Domain (FDTD) calculation. From the FDTD calculations, we were able to separate the light extraction from the top and bottom sides of device. This process revealed that light extraction from the top and bottom sides of a device strongly depends on the substrate and the surface corrugation. We found that enhanced LEE could be understood through the mechanism of enhanced light transmission due to refractive index matching and the increase of light scattering from the corrugated surface. LEE calculations for the encapsulated LEDs devices also revealed that low LEE enhancement is expected after encapsulation due to the reduction of the refractive index contrast.

Enhancement of light trapping in solar cells is becoming increasingly urgent for the development of next generation thin film solar cells. One of the possible candidates for increasing light trapping in thin film solar cells that has emerged recently is the use of scattering from metallic nanostructures. In this study, we have investigated the effects of the geometric parameters of Ag nanorings on the light scattering efficiency by using three dimensional Finite Different Time Domain (FDTD) calculations. We have found that the forward scattering of incident radiation from Ag nanorings strongly depends on the geometric parameters of the nanostructures such as diameter, height, etc. The forward scattering to substrate direction is increased as the outer diameter and height of the nanorings decrease. In particular, for nanorings larger than 200 nm, the inner diameter of Ag nanorings should be optimized to enhance the forward scattering efficiency. Light absorption and scattering efficiency calculations for the various nanoring arrays revealed that the periodicity of nanorings arrays also plays an important role in the absorption and the scattering efficiency enhancement. Light scattering efficiency calculations for nanoring arrays also revealed that enhancement of scattering efficiency could be utilized to enhance the light absorption through the forward scattering mechanism.