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This work was supported in part by the New and Renewable Energy Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) with a grant funded by the Korean government (MOTIE) (No. 2013010010120) and by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. 2014R1A2A1A11053936).

We report the electrical characteristics and conduction mechanism of a resistive switching memory device consisting of V3Si nanocrystals embedded in the SiO2 layer on multi-layered graphene. The V3Si nanocrystals with average size of 5 nm were formed between the SiO2 layers by thin film deposition and post-annealing process at 800 degrees C for 5 s. The current values of high (HRS) and low resistance states (LRS) at 1 V were measured to be about 3.26 x 10(-9) A and 3.11 x 10(-8) A, respectively. The ratio of the HRS and LRS after applying sweeping bias of ± 6 V appeared to be about 9.54 at 1 V. The resistance switching could originate from the effect of carrier trap and emission into the V3Si nanocrystals via the tunneling, space charge limited current, and thermionic emission mechanisms controlled by the modulation of the Fermi level of the graphene layer. The V3Si nanocrystals memory device has a strong possibility for the application of nonvolatile memory devices.

We have studied the effect of surface plasmon (SP) coupling to enhance emission efficiency of light emitting diode (LED) with multiple quantum wells (MQWs) structure by positioning Ag nanoparticles on the line-arrayed patterns. The line-arrayed patterns were fabricated by photolithography and inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching process. The Ag nanoparticles were formed by thermal annealing at 300 degrees C and 400 degrees C for 30 min for Ag films with thickness of 10 nm and 15 nm deposited on the patterned LED structures, respectively. The photoluminescence (PL) emission intensity of line-patterned LED with Ag nanoparticles was overall enhanced. According to the spectra of time resolved PL, carrier life times of line-patterned LED with and without Ag nanoparticles appeared about 0.47 and 5.47 ns, respectively.

We investigated the electrical and optical properties of n-ZnO/p-GaN hetero-junction diode fabricated by an ultra-high vacuum radio frequency magnetron sputter. A physical relationship between the rotation rate during deposition process and post annealing conditions after deposited ZnO layer on p-GaN layer was discussed. When the rotation rates during deposition process of n-ZnO layer were 5 rpm and 15 rpm, the full width at half maximum of photoluminescence spectra of ZnO layer on the p-GaN layer was about 106 and 133 meV, respectively. Also, the ratio of deep level emission to near band edge emission was dramatically increased as increasing the rotation rate from 5 to 15 rpm. The n-ZnO/p-GaN hetero-junction diode grown at 5 rpm has a higher ratio of forward to reverse currents than the diode grown at 15 rpm. Also, the 600 degrees C-annealed diodes with 5 rpm showed good rectifying behavior with the barrier height of 0.74 eV, the ideality factor of 12.2, and the forward to reverse current ratio of 614 at +/- 8 V.

Hybrid memory devices with polyimide and SnO2 nanocrystals on a flexible polyethersulphone substrate have shown a memristor behavior from current-voltage (I-V) measurements. The resistive-switching effects with a current bistability appeared during cycling voltage sweeping within the range of +/- 4 V. This I-V switching effect might have originated from a resistance fluctuation due to the charge trapping into the SnO2 nanocrystals as well as the oxygen vacancies of the ZnO layer and aluminum oxides that were formed between the polyimide and the interface of the Al gate electrode. In the bipolar resistance-switching behavior, the ratio of the high- and low-resistance state currents was about 3.7 x 10(4) at 1 V.

This study investigates the coupling modes of a-plane InGaN/GaN mutiquantum wells (MQWs) with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). The enhancement of light emissions at resonance photon energies can be explained by the surface plasmon coupling of the MQW-SWCNT hybrid structure. The photoluminescence (PL) enhancement ratios of the indigo (2.90 eV) emission from MQWs with SWCNTs reveal three coupling modes at 2.50 eV, 2.97 eV, and 3.42 eV. In addition, the trend of the PL intensity ratios and efficiencies corresponds to that of the PL enhancement ratios. The PL efficiencies for the green (2.46 eV) and indigo (2.90 eV) emissions of SWCNT-coated MQWs are 32% and 110% better than the corresponding values of uncoated MQWs, respectively. The results show that the MQW-SWCNT hybrid structure has the potential to be applied in high-efficiency light emitters in the visible and ultraviolet range.

WSi2 nanocrystal nonvolatile memory devices were fabricated with a silicon oxide-nitride-oxide (SiO2: 2 nm/Si3N4:2 nm/SiO2:3 nm) tunnel layer. WSi2 nanocrystals of 2.5 nm diameters and a density of 3.6 x 10(12) cm(-2) were formed using radio frequency magnetron sputtering and annealing processes. The WSi2 nanocrystal nonvolatile memory device exhibited strong thermal stability during writing/erasing operations at temperatures up to 125 degrees C. When the writing/erasing voltages were applied at +10 V/-10 V for 500 ms, the memory window of the initial approximately 2.6 V decreased by approximately 1.1 V at 25 degrees C and 0.4 V at 125 degrees C after 10(4) sec, respectively. These results show that WSi2 nanocrystals with barrier-engineered tunnel layers are possible for application in nonvolatile memory devices.

The electrical characteristics of SiC nanocrystal nonvolatile-memory devices with variable oxide and crested tunnel barriers consisting of a SiO2/Si3N4/SiO2 (ONO) and a Si3N4/SiO2/Si3N4 (NON) layer, respectively, were investigated. The equivalent oxide thickness of the ONO and NON tunnel barriers were about 5.6 nm and 5.2 nm, respectively. When the +/- 13 V bias voltage was applied for 500 ms, the threshold voltage shifts of the SiC-nanocrystal-embedded memory devices with ONO and NON tunnel barriers were about 2.4 V. The operation speeds of the memories with ONO and NON tunnel barriers under the +/- 10 V applied pulse bias were approximately 5 and 20 ms, respectively. The field sensitivity of the ONO tunnel barrier was higher than that of the NON tunnel barrier during electron injection. The tunneling efficiency during the programming/erasing processes could be improved by the engineered tunnel barrier layer. Therefore, the SiC-nanocrystal-embedded memory device with an ONO tunnel barrier can be applied to nonvolatile-memory devices.

The energy states of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) were analyzed by comparing between two QD systems with different QD sizes. The electrical properties of the QD systems were investigated via capacitance-voltage measurements and capacitance transient spectroscopy (also known as deep-level transient spectroscopy) with selective carrier injection and extraction which can be achieved with very small pulse amplitude under bias variation. For the large QDs, several energy states were found with the use of selective carrier injection and extraction. The thermal-activation energies obtained from the capacitance transient spectra of the large QDs were distributed from 70 to 600 meV. This energy distribution was originated from the quantized states of the individual QDs and the size distribution of the QDs. The spectra of the small QDs showed a well-defined energy state of E(c) - 132 meV. From these results, it was estimated that two to four electrons fill a single QD under the proper measurement bias of 0.2 V pulse.

Optical emissions from ZnO films were enhanced by a formation of hybrid structures with single wall carbon-nanotubes (SWCNTs). The SWCNTs were characterized by the presence of the associated fibers and islands together with many carbon nanotube structures and their average height was about < or = 40 nm from atomic force microscope and scanning electron microscope measurements. The intensities of photoluminescence on ZnO films with SWCNTs were increased up to about 30 and 60% in the region of 3.3 eV (near band edge) and 2.3 eV (deep-level) bands, respectively. It was considered that the enhancement of optical emissions from ZnO might be resulted from the effects of an excitation light scattering by SWCNTs and a surface plasmon resonance between bandgap of ZnO and SWCNTs. The surface plasmon resonance mode in the ultra-violet regions is smaller than the deep-level region relatively. This result showed that the commercial ZnO/carbon nanotubes have a feasibility of application to optoelectronic device.

A nano-floating gate capacitor with WSi2 nanocrystals embedded in SiO2 dielectrics was fabricated. The WSi2 nanocrystals were created from ultrathin WSi2 film during rapid thermal annealing process and their average size and density were about 2.5 nm and 3.59 x 10(12) cm(-2), respectively. The flat-band voltage shift due to the carrier charging effect of WSi2 nanocrystals were measured up to 5.9 V when the gate voltage sweep in the range of +/- 9 V. The memory window was decreased from 3.7 V to 1.9 V after 1 h and remained about 3.7 V after 10(5) programming/erasing cycles. These results show that there is a possibility for the WSi2 nanocrystals to be applied to nonvolatile memory devices.

We have studied the structural and optical properties of indium tin oxide (ITO) films deposited on sapphire substrates by electron beam evaporator with glancing angle deposition method. The ITO films were grown with different deposition angles of 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 45 degrees, 60 degrees at fixed deposition rate of 3 angstroms/s and with deposition rates of 2 angstroms/s, 3 angstroms/s, and 4angstroms/s at deposition angle of 45 degrees, respectively. From analysis of ellipsometry measurements, it appears that the void fraction of the films increased and their refractive indices decreased from 2.18 to 1.38 at the wavelength of 500 as increasing the deposition angle. The refractive index in the wavelength ranges of 550 nm-800 nm also depends on the deposition rates. Transmittance of ITO film with 235-nm-thickness grown at 60 degrees was covered about 20-80%, and then it was increased in visible wavelength range with increase of deposition angle.