The marine environment presents unique visual challenges for a range of organisms, particularly those dwelling at great depths, where sunlight may either be absent or drop to very low levels. Under these environmental conditions, the visual system must maximise light absorption in order to enhance the detection of prey, predators and potential mates. Using stereological analysis of retinal whol...

This chapter discusses studies of semiconducting nanowire arrays for solar cells. The concept of 3D nanowire architectures for photovoltaic light harvesting to effectively decouple light absorption and carrier separation is presented. The available literature on semiconductor nanowire solar cell studies is summarized. Optical and electronic aspects specific to nanowires are discussed to illustr...

In this study, we use a facile hydrothermal method to synthesize rGO@ZnO1−x composites. The in-situ synthesized ZnO nanosheets are well attached on the rGO sheets, which prevent the aggregation and restacking of ZnO nanosheets, greatly increasing the specific surface area of the synthesized materials. In addition, on account of the reducing synthesis condition, large numbers of oxygen vacancies...

The photochemical properties of homo- and heterometallic molybdate-based Lindqvist polyoxometalate clusters are investigated in a comparative study and it is shown that vanadium substitution can be used as a facile synthetic tool to optimize the visible light absorption and photocatalytic activity of the cluster. The mono-vanadium substituted unit, [VMo(5)O(19)](3-) shows light absorption up to...

(GaN)1-x(ZnO)x solid-solution nanostructures with superior crystallinity, large surface areas and visible light absorption have been regarded as promising photocatalysts for overall water splitting to produce H2. In this work, we report the preparation of (GaN)1-x(ZnO)x solid-solution nanorods with a high ZnO solubility up to 95% via a two-step synthetic route, which starts from a sol-gel react...

Photocatalysts show great potential in environmental remediation and water splitting using either artificial or natural light. Titanium dioxide (TiO2)-based photocatalysts are studied most frequently because they are stable, non-toxic, readily available, and highly efficient. However, the relatively wide band gap of TiO2 significantly limits its use under visible light or solar light. We herein...

This paper deals with an absorption spectroscopic method for trace gas measurements called DOAS (Diierential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy) from a statistical point of view. The DOAS technique is an absorption spectrosco-pic technique to measure trace gas concentrations. It is capable of detecting and measuring a number of important trace gases at tropospheric concentration levels by observin...

In this study, Fe(3)O(4)/SiO(2)/TiO(2) photocatalyst was prepared via a sol-gel method, and Fe(3)O(4) particles were used as the core of the colloid. Diffraction peaks of Fe(3)O(4) crystals are not found by XRD characterization, indicating that Fe(3)O(4) particles are well encapsulated by SiO(2). FTIR characterization shows that diffraction peaks of Ti-O-Si chemical bonds become obvious when th...

In this paper we consider the Interband Light Absorption Coefficient (ILAC), in a symmetric form, in the case of random operators on the d-dimensional lattice. We show that the symmetrized version of ILAC is either continuous or has a component which has the same modulus of continuity as the density of states.