Visible Light Water Splitting via Oxidized TiN Thin Films

Visible light water splitting using dye-sensitized oxide semiconductors.

Researchers are intensively investigating photochemical water splitting as a means of converting solar to chemical energy in the form of fuels. Hydrogen is a key solar fuel because it can be used directly in combustion engines or fuel cells, or combined catalytically with CO(2) to make carbon containing fuels. Different approaches to solar water splitting include semiconductor particles as phot...

Antimony-doped Tin(II) Sulfide Thin Films

Thin-film solar cells made from earth-abundant, inexpensive, and non-toxic materials are needed to replace the current technologies whose widespread use is limited by their use of scarce, costly, and toxic elements. Tin monosulfide (SnS) is a promising candidate for making absorber layers in scalable, inexpensive, and non-toxic solar cells. SnS has always been observed to be a p-type semiconduc...

Electronegativity-dependent tin etching from thin films

Light Transmission via Subwavelength Apertures in Metallic Thin Films

Nanostructured as-deposited indium tin oxide thin films for broadband antireflection and light trapping.

Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films were sputter-deposited at ambient temperature on a glass-like substrate that was periodically nanostructured by UV nanoimprint lithography. Cross gratings of the corrugated and conformal ITO, with different periods and modulation depths, were tailored to exhibit light trapping or antireflection properties at specific spectral windows by combined optical simulat...