The effects of polymer substrates on the interfacial structure and the thermal stability of Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) thin films were investigated. The GZO thin films were deposited on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrates by rf-magnetron sputtering at room temperature, and thermal stability tests of the GZO thin films on the polymer substrates were performed at 150°C up to 8 h in air. Electrical and structural characterizations of the GZO thin films on the PET and the PEN substrates were carried out, and the origins of the stable interfacial structure and the improved thermal stability of the GZO thin film on the PEN substrate were discussed.

We investigated the pressure dependence of the inductive coupled plasma (ICP) oxidation on the electrical characteristics of the thin oxide films. Activation energies and electron temperatures with different pressures were estimated. To demonstrate the pressure effect on the plasma oxide quality, simple N type metal-oxide-semiconductor (NMOS) transistors were fabricated and investigated in a few electrical properties. At higher pressure than 200mTorr, plasma oxide has a slightly higher on-current and a lower interfacial trap density. The on-current gain seems to be related to the field mobility increase and the lower defective interface to the electron temperature during oxidation.

Nondestructive damage sensing and load transfer mechanisms of thermal treated carbon nanotube (CNT) and nanofiber (CNF)/epoxy composites were investigated using electro-micromechanical technique. Carbon black (CB) was used only for the comparison. Electro-micromechanical techniques were applied to obtain the fiber damage and stress transferring effect of carbon nanocomposites with their contents. Thermal treatment and temperature affected on apparent modulus and electrical properties on nanocomposites due to enhanced inherent properties of each CNMs. Coefficient of variation (COV) of volumetric electrical resistance can be used to obtain the dispersion degree indirectly for various CNMs. Dispersion and surface modification are very important parameters to obtain improved mechanical and electrical properties of CNMs for multifunctional applications. Further optimized functionalization and dispersion conditions will be investigated for the following work continuously.

Processible poly(methylsilsesquioxane)s (PMSSQs) were prepared in THF solution under nitrogen atmosphere in the presence of HCl catalyst. It was found that various reaction parameters such as concentration, temperature, reaction time, the amount of water, and the amount of acid catalyst could affect the molecular weight and the amount of functional end groups of PMSSQ samples. Thin films prepared from our PMSSQ samples by spin-coating followed by curing to 420°C exhibited a much better crack resistance than those presented in the literature, while the dielectric constant remained practically the same, i.e., ca. 2.7.

It has been generally accepted that the product of the unloaded quality factor and resonant frequency is the universal parameter for comparison of dielectric resonators with different size.1,2 However, it is suggested in this study that this universal parameter should be modified due to the presence of the polarons. From the frequency dependence of the unloaded quality factor, it is possible to extract the factor determined only by the phonon scattering effects, and we denoted this parameter by Qs. It was found that the Qs parameter for ZrxSnzTiyO4 (ZST) and Ba(Zn1/3Ta2/3)O3 (BZT) ceramics showed constancy in the frequency range of 2–12 GHz, which supports the idea of polaron conduction loss contribution to the dielectric loss.

MgO thin films were deposited on Si(100) substrate with different temperatures from 500 °C to 800 °C and different e-beam powers from 25W to 100W using e-beam evaporation method. Pb(Zr0.53Ti0.47)O3(PZT) thin films were deposited on MgO/Si(100) substrates with different drying temperatures from 190 °C to 310 °C using sol-gel technique. If there were no buffer layer between the PZT thin film and Si substrate, the peaks corresponding to perovskite PZT phase were not observed. However the buffer layer were inserted between the PZT thin film and Si substrate, it was possible to fabricate perovskite PZT phase. The barrier effects of MgO thin film to the interdiffusion of Pb were investigated by AES study. Optimum thickness of MgO at which PZT/MgO/Si structure shows P-E hysteresis was calculated, and the hysteresis was tested for PZT/MgO/Si structures with different MgO thicknesses.