the dye-sensitized solar cells (dssc) have been regarded as one of the most promising new generation solar cells. tremendous research efforts have been invested to improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion which is generally determined by the light harvesting efficiency, electron injection efficiency and undesirable electron lifetime. in this review, various characteristics of dye-sensi...

We report on a generalmechanism for photo-induced phase transitions. The process relies on the photo-injection of hot electrons from an adjacent metallic layer to trigger the structural dynamics of the materials of interest. This mechanism is demonstrated for the semiconductor-to-metal phase transition of VO2 using a 20 nm Au injection layer. The nature of the phase transition is demonstrated b...

Electrons can be accelerated by their interaction with nonlinearly saturated electrostatic waves up to speeds with which they can undergo diffusive acceleration across supernova remnant shocks. Here, we model this wave-electron interaction by particle-in-cell and Vlasov simulations. We find that the lifetime of the saturated wave is considerably longer in the Vlasov simulation, due to differenc...

We report a pump-probe spectroscopy study of electron injection rates in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) devices. We examine the case of working devices employing an N719 ruthenium sensitizer and an iodide electrolyte. Electron injection is found to occur mainly on a sub-100 fs time scale, followed by a slower component with a lifetime of 26.9 ps, in accordance with previous reports on model s...

The general issues of injection into e+ecolliders are discussed using results from several storage rings. Obse&tions from these colliders indicate that the starting conditions and duration of each fill are often different. Consequently, it is shown that the optimum storage time is expected to be about twice as long as that expected from simple-uniform filling cycles. Injection parameters for se...

We performed laser wakefield electron acceleration experiments using laser powers up to 100 TW in the ‘bubble’ regime. The measured angularly resolved energy spectra of the electron beam showed evidence of betatron oscillations during the acceleration process. Through diagnosis of these oscillations, electron injection into the wakefield could be controlled through adjustment of the shape of th...