Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) suffer from efficiency limitations due to interfacial charge recombination at the TiO₂/dye/electrolyte interface. In this study, aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APS) was introduced onto nanoporous TiO₂ photoelectrodes via a dip-coating process with controlled coating times to investigate the effect of silanization time on interfacial charge transport behavior. Unlike concentration-driven structural modification, this work focuses on the evolution of the APS-modified interface governed by reaction time. The DSSC with 30 min APS treatment exhibited the highest power conversion efficiency of 5.34%, representing a 19% enhancement compared to the untreated device (4.49%), mainly due to increased short-circuit current density and open-circuit voltage. However, prolonged coating times (2 h and 24 h) resulted in a significant decrease in photocurrent density, leading to reduced device performance despite partial improvement in recombination resistance. These results are attributed to the time-dependent evolution of the APS interfacial layer. At moderate coating time, APS provides effective surface functionalization, enhancing dye adsorption and suppressing interfacial recombination. In contrast, prolonged coating is expected to induce increased surface coverage and silane condensation, which can hinder electron injection and increase charge transport resistance. Therefore, the photovoltaic performance is governed by a trade-off between recombination suppression and charge injection efficiency, controlled by the silanization time. This study highlights the critical role of interfacial reaction kinetics in determining charge transport behavior and provides an effective strategy for optimizing DSSC performance through time-dependent interface engineering.

Wearable temperature sensors are becoming increasingly important for continuous health monitoring, personalized healthcare, and biointegrated electronic systems. However, conventional temperature-sensing platforms often suffer from limited thermal sensitivity, insufficient mechanical compliance, and unstable performance under repeated deformation, making it difficult to detect subtle physiological temperature variations in real time. Here, this tutorial status report presents a fabrication strategy for highly sensitive wearable temperature sensors based on gold-doped crystalline silicon nanomembranes. Gold diffusion into crystalline silicon introduces deep-level impurity states that modulate the Fermi level and shift the freeze-out region toward the physiological temperature range, enabling an ultrahigh negative temperature coefficient of resistance. By integrating the gold-doped silicon nanomembrane with a polyimide-supported ultrathin platform, neutral mechanical plane design, and serpentine mesh interconnects, the resulting device can provide high thermal sensitivity, fast response, conformal skin attachment, and stable operation under mechanical deformation. This fabrication approach is expected to broaden the use of impurity-engineered silicon nanomembranes in next-generation wearable sensors, flexible bioelectronics, and multifunctional healthcare monitoring systems.

This study proposes an optimization strategy for the over-current protection (OCP) parameters of a lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO₄, LFP) battery system used in electric golf carts operating under high motor-load conditions. Real-world hillclimbing tests were conducted under four clearly defined payload/passenger conditions to analyze the transient discharge-current pro-file, voltage sag, and cell-temperature response. The maximum discharge current reached -238.2 A under the 200 kg cargopayload and one-passenger condition, and the current interval exceeding 150 A lasted up to 27 s. The maximum instantaneous power was 11.05 kW. Thermal analysis showed that the cell-temperature rise was within 2°C and the maximum measured cell temperature was 22.3°C. Linear regression of voltage and current yielded R² = 0.9368 and dV/dI = 0.0126 Ω, which was used as the DC internalresistance estimate. Based on these quantitative results and the cell specification limit of 300 A continuous discharge, the OCP threshold was reviewed from 250 A to 280 A to improve driving continuity while remaining below the allowable continuous-discharge current. EIS-based SOH estimation and the AI-BMS variable protection logic are presented as an extension framework for reflecting temperature and aging effects in future OCP-setting decisions.

The recent rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is creating new load characteristics in the distribution system, and in particular, the widespread use of single-phase charging methods is exacerbating phase load imbalances, leading to voltage unbalance issues. Such voltage imbalances can undermine the stability of the distribution system and may cause side effects such as reduced power quality and shortened equipment lifespan. This study proposes a smart distribution panel system that can detect voltage imbalance issues caused by uneven electric vehicle charging loads in real time and actively compensate for them. The proposed system aims to contribute to the stability and power quality improvement of the distribution network by integrating a load balancing algorithm with inter-phase voltage monitoring functionality.

With the advancement of the information society, the demand for highly integrated and multi-functional electronic devices is rapidly increasing. To meet these demands, high-performance transistors with low power consumption, high-speed operating, and mechanical flexibility are essential. Among various candidates, semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNT)-based transistors, which exhibit intrinsically ambipolar characteristics, have emerged as promising components for CMOS-like circuits. In this study, s-SWCNT were selectively dispersed using rr-P3DDT, a thiophene-based conjugated polymer, and filed-effect transistors (FETs) were fabricated by inducting directional alignment for enhanced charge transport through an off-centered spin-coating process. The electrical characteristics of the fabricated s-SWCNT FETs were evaluated under various thermal annealing conditions (100℃, 150℃, 200℃, and 250℃). Off-centered spin-coated and high temperature annealed s- SWCNT FETs exhibited high field-effect mobilities over 5 cm²/Vs in both p-type and n-type operation, along with ideal Vshaped ambipolar transfer curves. These results indicate a significant enhancement in ambipolar performance due to efficient desorption of residual oxygen and water molecules in active channel via high temperature annealing. Furthermore, CMOS-like inverter circuits demonstrated an ideal inversion voltage (VIN = V_DD/2) and a high voltage gain of approximately 9.5. These findings highlight the potential of SWCNT-based materials for realizing next-generation flexible electronic circuits that combine high-performance, energy efficiency, and simplified solution-processing.

Neuromorphic computing, inspired by the biological mechanisms of neural signal transmission, has emerged as a promising technology for efficient and parallel data processing with minimal power consumption. In this study, we developed floating-gate organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) with self-assembled monolayer (SAM)-based tunneling layers to mimic the characteristics of artificial synapses. The tunneling layers were formed using mixed phosphonic acid SAMs with varying ratios of octadecylphosphonic acid (ODPA) and 12-pentafluorophenoxydodecylphosphonic acid (PFPA). The influence of these ratios on the memory and neuromorphic characteristics of the devices was systematically evaluated. Our results revealed that the ODPA ratio significantly impacts the hysteresis window, with higher ODPA content yielding improved memory characteristics. Conversely, the PFPA : ODPA ratio of 2:1 exhibited the lowest non-linearity (NL = 0.48), demonstrating the potential for highly accurate weight updates in neuromorphic devices. Additionally, pulse width modulation studies showed that a pulse width of 100 ms optimized the linearity and stability of long-term potentiation (LTP) and depression (LTD) characteristics. The combination of sol-gel processed AlOx as a floating-gate layer and tailored SAM-based tunneling layers allowed for precise control of device performance. These findings highlight the importance of molecular engineering in designing SAM layers to balance memory retention and neuromorphic functionality. This study provides a pathway for advancing organic floating-gate transistors as a core component in next-generation neuromorphic computing systems.

Al-Mo thin films were fabricated using combinatorial sputtering system to realize highly sensitive surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. The Al-Mo sample library was grown with various chemical compositions and electrical resistivities, which provided important information for selecting the most suitable materials for SAW devices. As the SAWs generated from piezoelectric materials are significantly affected by the resistivity and density of the interdigital transducer (IDT) electrodes, three types of Al-Mo thin films with different Al contents were fabricated. The thickness of the Al-Mo thin film used in the SAW-IDT electrode was fixed at 150 nm. As the Al content of the Al-Mo thin film decreased from 81.2 to 30.3 at%, the resistivity decreased slightly from 5.43±0.15 to 4.87±0.1×10^-5 Ω-cm, whereas the calculated density increased significantly from 4.1 to 7.9 g/㎤. The SAW device composed of Al-Mo IDT electrodes resonated at 143 MHz without frequency shifts; however, the selectivity of the resonant frequency and insertion loss deteriorated as the Al content decreased. This suggest that the resonant characteristics of the SAW devices fabricated with Al-Mo thin films were more strongly influenced by the material density rather than the electrical properties of the IDT electrodes.

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the fire detection characteristics between conventional fire detector sensors and an Si-based color sensor. With the rapid industrial development in modern society, the concentration of urban populations and the expansion of building sizes have accelerated, leading to an increased frequency of large-scale fires. As a result, the importance of fire detection technologies has been emphasized. However, conventional detectors continue to experience issues such as false alarms and malfunctions. To address these challenges, a novel fire detection technology utilizing an Si-based color sensor, which is effective for fire detection, is proposed. To evaluate the fire detection performance of each sensor, a fire detection test apparatus was developed, and experiments were conducted separately under smoke and flame conditions to analyze the fire detection capabilities of the Si-based color sensor, temperature sensor, and flame detection sensor. The experimental results demonstrated that detection speed and sensor values varied depending on the type of combustible material. Specifically, in the smoke and flame tests, the Si-based color sensor detected fires 26.7 and 43.7 seconds faster than the temperature sensor, and 26.6 and 15.4 seconds faster than the flame detection sensor, respectively. Therefore, it was confirmed that the Si-based color sensor proposed in this study is an effective detection technology that is expected to provide improved performance compared to conventional fire detectors.

As the importance of eco-friendly technologies increases, hydrogen vehicles are gaining significant attention as a key component of future mobility. However, the sensor technology required to accurately measure the concentration of high-purity hydrogen gas, which serves as the fuel for hydrogen vehicles, currently lacks the sensitivity needed for commercialization and remains at a demonstrative stage. This study aims to enhance the detection performance of hydrogen sensors by optimizing the fabrication process of a membrane electrode assembly (MEA) with a Pt-based electrode-electrolyte-electrode structure, where the proton-conducting electrolyte is sandwiched between upper and lower Pt electrodes. The MEA was fabricated using a hot press method, and the process was optimized by adjusting pressure, temperature, and time parameters to improve both the physical and electrical properties of the MEA. The hydrogen sensor produced using the optimized MEA showed improved sensitivity. This enhancement enables the effective monitoring of high-purity hydrogen gas used in hydrogen vehicles, thereby improving the fuel efficiency of these vehicles.

Climate conditions, especially transport and storage, are a very important factor in the process of sampling and testing insulation oil in the field. The samples of insulating oil exposed to the atmosphere affect the dielectric strength, total acid number and moisture test value by oxygen and high humidity environment and may also affect the results according to the criteria specified in each test. Therefore, reliable test values for insulating oil testing require consideration of the atmospheric environment of the test site, including oxygen and humidity. In this paper, each test was conducted on insulating oil exposed to various time and humidity environments, and the effect of the atmospheric environment on the test results was analyzed by comparing and analyzing with the first insulating oil.

In this paper, the electrical properties of liquid insulating oil were analyzed by changing the ambient temperature change at 10℃ in-tervals from 0℃ to 30℃ through an insulation breakdown experiment in order to analyze the insulation performance of liquid in-sulating oil that varies according to temperature changes. As a result, it was confirmed through experiments that the lower the am-bient temperature, the higher the insulation breakdown voltage, depending on both the electrode shape and the electrode interval, and it was determined that the lower the ambient temperature, the higher the insulation performance of the liquid insulating oil.

Direct exposure to toxic and hazardous gases has always been considered as the most pervasive problem worldwide, leading to a gradual increase in the number of asthma patients due to NO_x/SO_x gases inhaling and exposure to 50 ppm formaldehyde gases. Therefore, the development of accurate gas sensors is a key issue for resolving these problems. To address such issues, the development of membranes for selective filtering of target molecules as well as nanocatalyst for enhancing the sensing selectivity is highly crucial. In this review, the research progress for porous membrane materials (e.g. MOFs, and graphene) and nanocatalyst technology for the development of selective and accurate gas sensors will be discussed.

Inorganic-organic hybrid perovskite solar cells have demonstrated considerable improvements, reaching 25.5% of certified power conversion efficiency in 2020 from 3.8% in 2009. In normal structured perovskite solar cells, TiO₂ electrontransporting materials require heat treatment process at a high temperature over 450℃ to induce crystallinity. Inverted perovskite solar cells have also been studied to exclude the additional thermal process by using [6,6]-phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) as a non-oxide electron-transporting layer. However, the drawback of the PCBM layer is a charge accumulation at the interface between PCBM and a metal electrode. The impact of bathocuproin (BCP) buffer layer on photovoltaic performance has been investigated herein to solve the problem of PCBM. 2-mM BCP-modified perovskite solar cells were observed to exhibit a maximum efficiency of 12.03% compared with BCP-free counterparts (5.82%) due to the suppression of the charge accumulation at the PCBM-Au interface and the resulting reduction of the charge recombination between perovskite and the PCBM layer.

Vocational education needs to be transformed to cultivate talents with diverse fusion competencies, which is in line with the recent changes that have become a part of the complex technological developments in the 4th Industrial Revolution. Therefore, it is very important for college graduates to obtain employment skills as they are required to prepare for careers within the complex environments of future societies. With the transition to the Internet of Things (IoT)-based control in the manufacturing industry, the development of technological education and related training programs is required to cultivate practical talents for students who have acquired not only the information on existing programmable logic controller (PLC)-based technology, but also that on embedded programming technology. Therefore, to develop an NCS-based education program for analog signal processing to ensure that programming can easily be learned for cultivating practical talent, this study summarizes the opinions of field experts, selects the appropriate NCS competency unit, and designs an adequate technology education training program.

Over the past decade, small robots have been of particular interest in the engineering field. Among the various types of small robots, biomimetic robots, which mimic animals and insects, have been developed for special activities in areas where humans cannot physically access. The optimal motion of a walking robot can be determined by the characteristics of the traversed surface (e.g., roughness, curvature, slope, materials, etc.). This study proposes three types of piezoelectric structures using different driving mechanisms, depending on the application range of the small walking robots. Dynamic modeling using computer-aided engineering optimized the shape of the robot to maximize its moving characteristics, and the results were also verified through its fabrication and experimentation. Three types of robots, named by their actuator shapes as I, π, & T-shape, were proposed regarding application for small scale ambulatory robots to different terrain conditions. Among these, the T-shaped robots were shown to have a wide range of speeds (from 2 mm/s up to 255 mm/s) and good carrying capacity (up to 10 g at 50 mm/s) through driving experiments. Based on this study, we proposed possible application areas for the three types of walking robot actuators.

Small-scale production control systems for smart manufacturing are becoming increasingly necessary as the manufacturing industry seeks to maximize manufacturing efficiency as the demand for customized product production increases. Correspondingly, the development of an embedded system to realize this capability is becoming important. In this study, we developed an embedded system based on an open source system that is cheaper than a widely applied programmable logic controller (PLC)-based production control system that is easier to install, configure, and process than a conventional relay control panel. This embedded system is system is based on a low-power, high-performance Cortex M4 processor and can be applied to smart manufacturing. It is designed to improve the development environment and compatibility of existing PLCs, control small-scale production systems, and enable data collection through heterogeneous communication. The real-time response characteristics were confirmed through an operation test for input/output control and data collection, and it was confirmed that they can be used in industrial sites.

In this study, the
objective
is to improve the criteria used for statistical comparison of the VLF tanδ (TD) database and failure rate according to water-tree degradation in underground distribution power cables. The aging condition of the KEPCO criteria is divided into 6 levels using the Weibull distribution, and the “failure imminent” condition is quantified by using the statistical end-point of the lifetime parameter of the VLF big-data group obtained from KEPCO. Moreover, new criteria with a 2-dimensional combination of TD, DTD, and a statistical normalized factor are suggested. These criteria exhibit high reproducibility for the detection of cables in an imminent failure state. Consequently, it is expected that the adoption of the extended VLF-2019 criteria will reduce the asset management cost of cable replacement compared to the VLF-2012 criteria of KEPCO.

Herein, we report the manufacture of high-performance, ambipolar organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) and complementary-like electronic circuitry based on a blended, polymeric, semiconducting film. Relatively high and wellbalanced electron and hole mobilities were achieved by incorporating a small amount of ionic additives. The equivalent P-channel and N-channel properties of the ambipolar OFETs enabled the manufacture of complementary-like inverter circuits with a near-ideal switching point, high gain, and good noise margins, via a simple blanket spin-coating process with no additional patterning of each active P-type and N-type semiconductor layer.

ZrO₂/PSS thin film with a high refractive index was fabricated on a glass substrate by a layer-by-layer self-assembly method. The surface morphology and thickness of the fabricated ZrO₂/PSS thin films were measured as a function of the number of (ZrO₂/PSS)n. As the number of (ZrO₂/PSS)n increased from n = 5 to n = 20, RMS roughness decreased from 29.01 nm to 8.368 nm. The ZrO₂ thin films exhibited high transmittance of 85% or more; and the 15-bilayer thin film exhibited the highest transmittance among the samples. The transmittance of the fabricated (ZrO₂/PSS)₁₅ thin film was ca. 90.8% in the visible range. The refractive index of the glass substrate coated by a (ZrO₂/PSS)₁₅ thin film with a thickness of 160 nm increased from ca. 1.52 to 1.74 at the 632 nm wavelength.

In this study, we examine the electrical properties of diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) containing polymer semiconductors that have been reported to show high performance with ambipolar characteristics. We prepared three different DPP based polymer semiconductors (PDPPTPT, PDPP3T, and PDPP2T-TT) and fabricated organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) with ambipolar polymer semiconductors as an active layer. All three DPP polymers showed only p-type properties at initial measurements. However, after annealing in vacuum oven for 24 hours, it was found that the DPP based polymers have both p-type and n-type properties. It is speculated that the residual impurities supposedly regarded as a strong electron trap source were eliminated during the vacuum process.

The power conversion efficiency of organic polymer solar cells was enhanced by introducing a ferroelectric polymer layer at the interface between active layer and metal electrode. The power conversion efficiency was increased by 50% through the enhancement of the open circuit voltage. To investigate the role of the ferroelectric layer on the dissociation process of the excitons, non-radiative portion of the exciton decay was directly measured by using photoacoustic technique. The results show that the ferroelectric nature of the buffer layer does not play any roles on the dissociation process of the excitons, which indicates the efficiency enhancement is not due to the ferroelectricity of the buffer layer.

Electrical and optical properties of the AC voltage driven organic light-emitting diodes were investigated by measuring the electroluminescence of the device. Device structure of ITO(170 nm)/TPD(40 nm)/Alq3(60 nm)/LiF(0.5 nm)/Al(100 nm) was manufactured using a thermal evaporation. Sinusoidal and square-type AC voltage was applied to the device using a function generator. Amplitude of the applied voltage was 9.0 V, and a frequency was varied from 50 Hz to 50 kHz. Electroluminescence out of the device was measured in a Si photodetector simultaneously with the applied voltage together. An intensity and a delayed residual luminescence from the device were depended on the frequency of the sinusoidal voltage. It is thought to be due to a contribution of the capacitive nature in the equivalent circuit of the device. An electron mobility was estimated using a time constant obtained from the luminescence of the device driven by the square-type AC voltage.

In this study, p-type thin film transistors consisting of CuO channels were fabricated by sol-gel process, with copper (II) acetate monohydrate precursors. At 500℃, the deposited films were fully converted into monoclinic phase CuO. The fabricated CuO thin film transistors deliver field effect mobility in saturation regime of 0.015㎠/Vs, and I_on/I_off of ~10³. The degradation of the performance of the fabricated CuO thin film transistor caused by the exposure to air has been studied.

Single-chamber solid oxide fuel cells (SC-SOFCs) consist of only one gas chamber, in which both the anode and the cathode are exposed to the same fuel-oxidant mixture. Thus, this configuration shows good thermal and mechanical resistance and allows rapid start-up and -down. In this study, the unit cell consisting of La_0.8Sr_0.2MnO₃ (cathode) / Zr_0.84Y_0.16O_2-x (electrolyte) / Ni-Zr_0.84Y _0.16O_2-x (anode) was fabricated and its electrochemical property was investigated as a function of temperature and the volume ratio of fuel and oxidant for SC-SOFCs. Impedance spectra were also investigated in order to figure out the electrical characteristics of the cell. As a result, the cell performance was governed by the polarization resistances of the electrodes. The cell exhibited an acceptable cell-performance of 86 mW/cm2 at 800℃ and stable performance for 3 hs under 0.7 V.

For the improvement of the anti-pollution properties of porcelain electrical insulators, in this study, we have applied the functional film to the surface of insulator. The functional films were coated on the ceramic substrates which components were like the porcelain electrical insulator. The coating material was applied to ceramic substrate by spray coating method and then the film was cured at around 300oC for 10 minutes with different gas ambient, such as O2, N2, and only vacuum. We have measured the contact angle of the coated surface, and obtained the lowest angle (8.9o) and a strong hydrophilic property at vacuum condition. The anti-pollution properties were measured, revealing that as the contact angle decreased, the anti-pollution properties improved. The mechanical hardness and adhesion were both excellent regardless of the annealing ambient.

In this paper, in order to develop optimum composition ceramics with excellent piezoelectric properties, (Na0.525K0.443Li0.037)(Nb0.823Sb0.08Ta0.037)O3 + 0.3 wt%Bi2O3 + 0.4 wt%Fe2O3 lead-free piezoelectric ceramics were synthesized by conventional soild-state method. The calcination temperature of columbite precursors were fabricated at temperature range from 950℃ to 1,150℃ and sintering aids with low melting point were added to densify these ceramics. Effect of calcination temperature on dielectric and piezoelectric properties of ceramics were investigated. the ceramics with B-site columbite precursors at temperature of 1,100℃ obtained the optimal values of d33=272 [pC/N], kp=0.51, Qm=102, εr=978.

Some insulating materials are tested and analyzed with variables to obtain the reliable pressboard which is located to core and coil of high voltage transformer. The high voltage transformer is used in electrical power system and operating reliability. Optimization possibility of pressboard shape including electrical insulation performance could be achieved by analysis simulation. Using insulating pressboard, which is made by mold applied eddy current loss, it could be measured the influences of moisture content for electrical properties. As a result, it is to contribute to improve the performance and ensure the reliability of the pressboard by investigating electrical strength according to the variation oil temperature. In addition pressboard thickness is important design factor to ensure electrical strength in high voltage transformer.

We established the emulsion method using membrane filter with precise control of LC droplet distribution in PDLC. PDLC cells with various LC droplet size distributions such as single droplet sizes of 1.0 μn, 1.9 μn and 3.5 μm, the mixture of two different LC droplet sizes and the mixture of three different LC droplet sizes were fabricated and the electro-optical properties of the emulsion type PDLC cells with various droplet size distribution were investigated. In the appropriate droplet size range, the PDLCs with the single droplet sizes distributions have good electro optical properties than those with the mixture of three different LC droplet sizes. In addition, the PDLC cells with the mixture of two different LC droplet sizes have the better electro optical properties than those with single droplet sizes distribution. The PDLC cell with dual droplet size distribution of 1.0+1.9 μm shown the best electro optical properties than the PDLC cells with other size distributions. This method enabled us to find the proper LC droplet size distribution for achieving both high transmittance and contrast ratio.

Recently, LED is widely used in the kinds of display devices or lighting. In this paper, we fabricated LED chamber light for naval vessels to replace to conventional chamber light using incandescent lamp. The LED package of chamber light was designed with luminous intensity of 5.5 cd, color temperature of 6,000 ± 500 K, forward voltage of 3~3.2 V and input current of 60 mA. A LED module was composed of 36 LED packages and metal PCB. The VF and luminous intensity of LED package were getting down when temperature increased. The temperature of LED chamber light was measured by changing the number of LED package and applied current for one hour when an electric current flow. The heat transfer capability have been improved by using metal PCB. The power consumption of LED chamber light reduced by 86% compared to the conventional chamber light using incandescent lamp.

Transparent amorphous In-Si-O (ISO)/Ag/In-Si-O (ISO) has been reported for low emissivity(low-e) applications. Effective Si doping into the In2O3 matrix led to a completely amorphous ISO film aswell as a low resistivity and a high optical transmittance. The optical and electrical performances wereexamined by measuring transmittance with a UV-VIS spectrophotometer and resistivity with a Hall effectmeasurement. Consequently, low-e glass with ISO/Ag/ISO showed a high transparency in the visibleregion and low emissivity in the infrared region, indicating that ISO is a promising amorphoustransparent electrode for low-e glass.