Investigation into integrated PEC/PVC for water splitting and light harvesting has focused on doping, QD sensitization and nanomaterials morphology. We have demonstrated, for the first time, PVC based on combined use of nitrogen doping and CdSe QD sensitization of nanocrystalline TiO2 thin films with promising results for solar energy conversion. Such TiO2:N/CdSe PVC produced an incident-photon...

ZnO particles with an average size of about 5 nm were prepared via a sol-gel chemical route and the silane coupling agent, (3-glycidyloxypropyl)-trimethoxysilane (GPTS), was adopted to enhance the dispersion of the ZnO nanoparticles in ethyl glycol (EG) solution. A ZnO surface potential as high as 66 mV was observed and a sedimentation test showed that the ZnO precursor solution remains transpa...

In this study we investigated the influence of an organic polystyrene brush on the deposition of ZnO thin films under moderate conditions. On a non-modified SiO x surface, island growth is observed, whereas the polymer brush induces homogeneous film growth. A chemical modification of the polystyrene brushes during the mineralization process occurs, which enables stronger interaction between the...

The optimization process of the RF magnetron sputtered Al doped ZnO (AZO) thin films was carried out by studying its structural, optical, electrical, and morphological properties at different RF power and different working pressures for its use as a front-contact for the copper indium diselenide (CIS) based thin film solar cell. The structural study suggests that the preferred orientation of gr...

By kinetically controlled vapor-diffusion catalysis, nanostructured ZnO and Zn5(OH)8(NO3)3*2H2O thin films have been grown on substrates with different chemical compositions and varying degrees of crystallinity. The materials resulting from heterogeneous nucleation under mild conditions (starting from aqueous metal salt precursor solutions at room temperature) were characterized by X-ray diffra...

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In this paper, we report the preparation and characterization of both the ZnO nanocrystalline thin films and nanopowder by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis technique. ZnO films were grown on polished Si(1 0 0) and amorphous glass substrates at different deposition temperature range varying from 200 to 500 1C. Both orientation and the size of the crystallites were found to depend on the substrate and ...

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Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) utilize high surface area metal oxide sintered particle networks to absorb molecular dyes and transport injected charge carriers. While this sintered particle architecture allows liquid electrolyte DSSCs to achieve efficiencies up to 11%, slow charge transport through the semiconductor network limits the amount of modification that can be made to the electroly...