Chalcogenide-based semiconductors, such as CuInSe2, CuGaSe2, Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS), and CdTe have attracted considerable interest as efficient materials in thin film solar cells (TFSCs). Currently, CIGS and CdTe TFSCs have demonstrated the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of over 11% in module production. However, commercialized CIGS and CdTe TFSCs have some limitations due to the scarcity of In, Ga, and Te and the environmental issues associated with Cd and Se. Recently, kesterite CZTS, which is one of the In- and Ga- free absorber materials, has been attracted considerable attention as a new candidate for use as an absorber material in thin film solar cells. The CZTS-based absorber material has outstanding characteristics such as band gap energy of 1.0 eV to 1.5 eV, high absorption coefficient on the order of 104cm-1, and high theoretical conversion efficiency of 32.2% in thin film solar cells. Despite these promising characteristics, research into CZTS-based thin film solar cells is still incomprehensive and related reports are quite few compared to those for CIGS thin film solar cells, which show high efficiency of over 20%. The recent development of kesterite-based CZTS thin film solar cells is summarized in this work. The new challenges for enhanced performance in CZTS thin films are examined and prospective issues are addressed as well.

This study attempted to manufacture a Cu-15 at.%Ga coating layer via the cold spray process and investigated the effect of heat treatment environment on the properties of cold sprayed coating material. Three kinds of heat treatment environments, +argon, pure argon, and vacuum were used in this study. Annealing treatments were conducted at /1 hr. With the cold sprayed coating layer, pure -Cu and small amounts of were detected in the XRD, EDS, EPMA analyses. Porosity significantly decreased and hardness also decreased with increasing annealing temperature. The inhomogeneous dendritic microstructure of cold sprayed coating material changed to the homogeneous and dense one (microstructural evolution) with annealing heat treatment. Oxides near the interface of particles could be reduced by heat treatment especially in vacuum and argon environments. Vacuum environment during heat treatment was suggested to be most effective one to improve the densification and purification properties of cold sprayed Cu-15 at.%Ga coating material.

Ag spot-coated Cu nanopowders were synthesized by a hydrothermal-attachment method (HA) using oleic acid capped Ag hydrosol. Cu nano powders were synthesized by pulsed wire exploding method using 0.4 mm in diameter of Cu wire (purity 99.9%). Synthesized Cu nano powders are seen with comparatively spherical shape having range in 50 nm to 150 nm in diameter. The oleic acid capped Ag hydrosol was synthesized by the precipitation-redispersion method. Oleic acid capped Ag nano particles showed the narrow size distribution and their particle size were less than 20 nm in diameter. In the case of nano Ag-spot coated Cu powders, nanosized Ag particles were adhered in the copper surface by HAA method. The components of C, O and Ag were distributed on the surface of copper powder.

Studies on lead-free piezoelectrics have been attractive as means of meeting environmental requirements. We synthesized lead-free piezoelectric (Bi1/2Na1/2)TiO3-Ba(Cu1/3Nb2/3)O3 (BNT-BCN) ceramics, and their dielectric, piezoelectric, and strain behavior were characterized. As BCN with a tetragonal phase was incorporated into the rhombohedral BNT lattice, the lattice constant increased. A small amount of BCN increased the density and dielectric constant forming the complete solid solution with BNT. However, BCN above 10 mol% was precipitated into a separate phase, and which was detected with XRD. In addition, EDX measurement revealed that Cu in BCN was not distributed homogeneously but was accumulated in a certain area. A lower density with a large amount of BCN was attributed to the nonsinterable property of BCN with large tetragonaliy. The dielectric constant vs the temperature change and the strain vs the electric field indicated that the ferroelectric property of BNT was diminished and paraelectric behavior was enhanced with the BCN addition. BNT-7.5BCN showed a 0.11% unimorph strain with a 9.0 kV/mm electric field with little hysteresis.

A high-quality CIGS film with a selenization process needs to be developed for low-cost and large-scale production. In this study, we used Cu2In3, CuGa and Cu2Se sputter targets for the deposition of a precursor. The precursor deposited by sputtering was selenized in Se vapor. The precursor layer deposited by the co-sputtering of Cu2In3, CuGa and Cu2Se showed a uniform distribution of Cu, In, Ga, and Se throughout the layer with Cu, In, CuIn, CuGa and Cu2Se phases. After selenization at 550˚C for 30 min, the CIGS film showed a double-layer microstructure with a large-grained top layer and a small-grained bottom layer. In the AES depth profile, In was found to have accumulated near the surface while Cu had accumulated in the middle of the CIGS film. By adding a Cu-In-Ga interlayer between the co-sputtered precursor layer and the Mo film and adding a thin Cu2Se layer onto the co-sputtered precursor layer, large CIGS grains throughout the film were produced. However, the Cu accumulated in the middle of CIGS film in this case as well. By supplying In, Ga and Se to the CIGS film, a uniform distribution of Cu, In, Ga and Se was achieved in the middle of the CIGS film.

Cu(In, Ga)Se2 (CIGS) precursor films were electrodeposited on Mo/glass substrates in acidic solutions containingCu2+, In3+, Ga3+, and Se4+ ions at −0.6V (SCE) and pH 1.8. In order to induce recrystallization, the electrodepositedCu1.00In0.81Ga0.09Se2.08 (25.0at.% Cu+20.2at.% In+2.2at.% Ga+52.0at.% Se) precursor films were annealed under a highSe gas atmosphere for 15, 30, 45, and 60 min, respectively, at 500oC. The Se amount in the film increased from 52at.% to62at.%, whereas the In amount in the film decreased from 20.8at.% to 9.1at.% as the annealing time increased from 0 (as-deposited state) to 60 min. These results were attributed to the Se introduced from the furnace atmosphere and reacted withthe In present in the precursor films, resulting in the formation of the volatile In2Se. CIGS precursor grains with a cauliflowershape grew as larger grains with the CuSe2 and/or Cu2-xSe faceted phases as the annealing times increased. These faceted phasesresulted in rough surface morphologies of the CIGS films. Furthermore, the CIGS layers were not dense because the emptyspaces between the grains were not removed via annealing. Uniform thicknesses of the MoSe2 layers occurred at the 45 and60 min annealing time. This implies that there was a stable reaction between the Mo back electrode and the Se diffused throughthe CIGS film. The results obtained in the present research were sufficiently different from comparable studies where therecrystallization annealing was performed under an atmosphere of Ar gas only or a low Se gas pressure.

In this study, gradient porous Al-Cu sintered body was fabricated by powder metallurgy processing. Al-Cu powder mixtures were prepared by low energy ball milling with various milling time. After ball milling for 3h, the shape of powder mixtures changed to spherical type with size of 100~500 . Subsequently, Al-Cu powder mixtures were classified (under 150, 150~300 and over 300 ) and compacted (20, 50 and 100 MPa). Then, they were sintered at for various holding time (10, 30, 60 and 120 min) in atmosphere. The sintered bodies had 32~45% of porosity. As a result, the optimum holding time was determined to be 60 min at and sintered bodies with various porosity were obtained by controlling the compacting pressure.

In order to fabricate the porous metal with controlled pore characteristics, unique processing by using metal oxide powder as the source and camphene as the sublimable material is introduced. CuO powder was selected as the source for the formation of Cu metal via hydrogen reduction. Camphene-based CuO slurry, prepared by milling at with a small amount of dispersant, was frozen at . Pores were generated subsequently by sublimation of the camphene. The green body was hydrogen-reduced at for 30 min, and sintered at for 1 h. Microstructural analysis revealed that the sintered Cu showed aligned large pore channels parallel to the camphene growth direction, and fine pores are formed around the large pore. Also, it showed that the pore size was controllable by the slurry concentration.

Inkjet printing was successfully done using Cu nano powder ink after these Cu nano powders were dry-coated with 1-octanethiol for oxidation prevention. 1-octanethiol, which is Self-Assembled Multi-layers (SAMs), was coated approximately 10-nm thick on the surface of Cu nano powders. 1-Octanol, which has the same chain length as that for 1-octanethiol, was used as a solvent to make the ink for inkjet printing. As a result, the fabricated ink was dispersed for about 4 weeks, and after printing and heat treatment at for 4 hours, the resistivity for the printed pattern was measured to be .

In order to make a (CZTSe) sputtering target sintered for solar cell application, synthesis of CZTSe compound by solid state reaction of Cu, Zn, Sn and Se mixed powders and effects of ball milling condition on sinterability such as ball size, combination of ball size, ball milling time and sintering temperature, was investigated. As a result of this research, sintering at after ball milling using mixed balls of 1 mm and 3 mm for 72 hours was the optimum condition to synthesis near stoichiometric composition of and to prepare sintered pellet with high density relatively.

As the performance of microelectronic devices is improved, the use of copper as a heat dissipation member is increasing due to its good thermal conductivity. The high thermal conductivity of copper, however, leads to difficulties in the joining process. Satisfactory bonding with copper is known to be difficult, especially if high shear and peel strengths are desired. The primary reason is that a copper oxide layer develops rapidly and is weakly attached to the base metal under typical conditions. Thus, when a clean copper substrate is bonded, the initial strength of the joint is high, but upon environmental exposure, an oxide layer may develop, which will reduce the durability of the joint. In this study, an epoxy adhesive formulation was investigated to improve the strength and reliability of a copper to copper joint. Epoxy hardeners such as anhydride, dihydrazide, and dicyandiamide and catalysts such as triphenylphosphine and imidazole were added to an epoxy resin mixture of DGEBA and DGEBF. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyses revealed that the curing temperatures were dependent on the type of hardener rather than on the catalyst, and higher heat of curing resulted in a higher Tg. The reliability of the copper joint against a high temperature and high humidity environment was found to be the lowest in the case of dihydrazide addition. This is attributed to its high water permeability, which led to the formation of a weak boundary layer of copper oxide. It was also found that dicyandiamide provided the highest initial joint strength and reliability while anhydride yielded intermediate performance between dicyandiamide and dihydrazide.

The present study was carried out to evaluate the microstructural and mechanical properties of cross-roll rolled pure copper sheets, and the results were compared with those obtained for conventionally rolled sheets. For this work, pure copper (99.99 mass%) sheets with thickness of 5 mm were prepared as the starting material. The sheets were cold rolled to 90% thickness reduction and subsequently annealed at 400˚C for 30 min. Also, to analyze the grain boundary character distributions (GBCDs) on the materials, the electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) technique was introduced. The resulting cold-rolled and annealed sheets had considerably finer grains than the initial sheets with an average size of 100 μM. In particular, the average grain size became smaller by cross-roll rolling (6.5 μM) than by conventional rolling (9.8 μM). These grain refinements directly led to enhanced mechanical properties such as Vickers micro-hardness and tensile strength, and thus the values showed greater increases upon cross-roll rolling process than after conventional rolling. Furthermore, the texture development of<112>//ND in the cross-roll rolling processed material provided greater enhancement of mechanical properties relative to the case of the conventional rolling processed material. In the present study, we systematically discuss the enhancement of mechanical properties in terms of grain refinement and texture distribution developed by the different rolling processes.

Effect of Cu content on microstructural and magnetic properties of a (wt.%), (x = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5) strip-cast was studied. The average inter-lamellar spacing in the free surface and wheel side of the strip cast increased as the Cu content increases. The grain uniformity, the grain alignment, and (00L) texture of the strip cast increased with Cu contents up to 0.4 wt.%. These microstructural changes were attributed to the decrease of the effective cooling rate of the melted alloy caused by the decrease of the melting temperature of resulting from Cu addition. Coercivity and remanence were increased because of the grain alignment and (00L) texture improvement with Cu contents up to 0.4 wt.%.

The microstructure and Cu diffusion barrier property of Ta-Si-N films for various Si and N compositions were studied. Ta-Si-N films of a wide range of compositions (Si: 0~30 at.%, N: 0~55 at.%) were deposited by DC magnetron reactive sputtering of Ta and Si targets. Deposition rates of Ta and Si films as a function of DC target current density for various N2/(Ar+N2) flow rate ratios were investigated. The composition of Ta-Si-N films was examined by wavelength dispersive spectroscopy (WDS). The variation of the microstructure of Ta-Si-N films with Si and N composition was examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The degree of crystallinity of Ta-Si-N films decreased with increasing Si and N composition. The Cu diffusion barrier property of Ta-Si-N films with more than sixty compositions was investigated. The Cu(100 nm)/Ta-Si-N(30 nm)/Si structure was used to investigate the Cu diffusion barrier property of Ta-Si-N films. The microstructure of all Cu/Ta-Si-N/Si structures after heat treatment for 1 hour at various temperatures was examined by XRD. A contour map that shows the diffusion barrier failure temperature for Cu as a function of Si and N composition was completed. At Si compositions ranging from 0 to 15 at.%, the Cu diffusion barrier property was best when the composition ratio of Ta + Si and N was almost identical.

Cu(In,Ga)Se2(CIGS) photovoltaic thin films were electrodeposited on Mo/glass substrates with an aqueous solution containing 2 mM CuCl2, 8 mM InCl3, 20 mM GaCl3 and 8mM H2SeO3 at the electrodeposition potential of -0.6 to -1.0 V(SCE) and pH of 1.8. The best chemical composition of Cu1.05In0.8Ga0.13Se2 was found to be achieved at -0.7 V(SCE). The precursor Cu-In-Ga-Se films were annealed for crystallization to chalcopyrite structure at temperatures of 100-500˚C under Ar gas atmosphere. The chemical compositions, microstructures, surface morphologies, and crystallographic structures of the annealed films were analyzed by EPMA, FE-SEM, AFM, and XRD, respectively. The precursor Cu-In-Ga-Se grains were grown sparsely on the Mo-back contact and also had very rough surfaces. However, after annealing treatment beginning at 200˚C, the empty spaces between grains were removed and the grains showed well developed columnar shapes with smooth surfaces. The precursor Cu-In-Ga-Se films were also annealed at the temperature of 500˚C for 60 min under Se gas atmosphere to suppress the Se volatilization. The Se amount on the CIGS film after selenization annealing increased above the Se amount of the electrodeposited state and the MoSe2 phase occurred, resulting from the diffusion of Se through the CIGS film and interaction with Mo back electrode. However, the selenization-annealed films showed higher crystallinity values than did the films annealed under Ar atmosphere with a chemical composition closer to that of the electrodeposited state.

Cu-Sn based alloys were manufactured by gas atomization spray casting route in order to achieve a fine scale microstructure and a high tensile strength. The spray cast Cu-10Sn-2Ni-0.2Si alloy had an equiaxed grain microstructure, with no formation of brittle phase. Aging treatment promoted the precipitation of finely distributed particles corresponding to intermetallic phase throughout the -(CuSn) matrix. The cold-rolled Cu-Sn-Ni-Si alloy had a very high tensile strength of 1200 MPa and an elongation of 5%. Subsequent aging treatment at for 1h slightly reduced the tensile strength to 700 MPa and remarkably increased the elongation up to 30%. This result has been explained by coarsening the precipitates due to over aging and reducing the dislocation density due to annealing effects.

In this study, Cu-10Sn and Cu-10Sn-2Ni-0.2Si alloys have been manufactured by spray casting in order to achieve a fine scale microstructure and high tensile strength, and investigated in terms of microstructural evolution, aging characteristics and tensile properties. Spray cast alloys had a much lower microhardness than continuous cast billet because of an improved homogenization and an extended Sn solid solubility. Spray cast Cu-Sn-Ni-Si alloy was characterized by an equiaxed grain microstructure with a small-sized (Ni, Si)-rich precipitates. Cold rolling of Cu-Sn-Ni-Si alloy increased a tensile strength to 1220 MPa, but subsequent ageing treatment reduced a ultimate tensile strength to 780 MPa with an elongation of 18%.

The Cu nanofluid in ethylene glycol was prepared by electrical explosion of wire, a novel one-step method. The X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope were used to study the properties of Cu nanoparticles. The results showed that the nanoparticles were consisted of pure face-centered cubic structure and near spherical shape with average grain size of 65 nm. Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis) confirmed Cu nanoparticles with a single absorbance peak of Cu surface plasmon resonance band at 600 nm. The nanofluid was found to be stable due to high positive zeta potential value, +51 mV. The backscattering level of nanofluid in static stationary was decreased about 2% for 5 days. The thermal conductivity measurement showed that Cu-ethylene glycol nanofluid with low concentration of nanoparticles had higher thermal conductivity than based fluid. The enhancement of thermal conductivity of nanofluid at a volume fraction of 0.1% was approximately 5.2%.

The selenization process has been a promising method for low-cost and large-scale production of high quality CIGS film. However, there is the problem that most Ga in the CIGS film segregates near the Mo back contact. So the solar cell behaves like a CuInSe2 and lacks the increased open-circuit voltage. In this study we investigated the Ga distribution in CIGS films by using the Ga2Se3 layer. The Ga2Se3 layer was applied on the Cu-In-Ga metal layer to increase Ga content at the surface of CIGS films and to restrict Ga diffusion to the CIGS/Mo interface with Ga and Se bonding. The layer made by thermal evaporation was showed to an amorphous Ga2Se3 layer in the result of AES depth profile, XPS and XRD measurement. As the thickness of Ga2Se3 layer increased, a small-grained CIGS film was developed and phase seperation was showed using SEM and XRD respectively. Ga distributions in CIGS films were investigated by means of AES depth profile. As a result, the [Ga]/[In+Ga] ratio was 0.2 at the surface and 0.5 near the CIGS/Mo interface when the Ga2Se3 thickness was 220 nm, suggesting that the Ga2Se3 layer on the top of metal layer is one of the possible methods for Ga redistribution and open circuit voltage increase.