Quantum Dot Donor-Polymer Acceptor Architecture for a FRET-Enabled Solar Cell

A Green-Emitting Luminol Analogue as the Next-Generation Chemiluminescent Substrate in Biochemical Analysis

Luminol and its derivatives are extensively used as chemiluminogenic substrates in bioimaging and biochemical analysis. Luminol reagents can typically emit blue chemiluminescence (CL), whose wavelength is normally outside the most sensitive detection range of human naked eyes and most CL analyzers with silicon-based charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors. Development of luminol analogues with longer wavelength emission is thus attractive. Herein, four new phthalhydrazide CL probes (GL-1/2/3/4) have been prepared through the derivatization of luminol. The most promising one, 5-(4-hydroxy-1,3-dioxoisoindolin-2-yl)-2,3-dihydrophthalazine-1,4-dione (GL-1), emits bright green CL upon oxidation and shows enhanced CL performance compared to its parent luminol. Bloodstain imaging, horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-based immunoassay, and the analysis of glucose/glucose oxidase reaction have been performed using the GL-1 reagent. These results indicate that GL-1 is a new chemiluminogenic luminol analogue with great potential in real analytical applications and will be an alternative to replace luminol in practical CL analysis.

Efficient PbS Quantum Dot Solar Cells with Both Mg-Doped ZnO Window Layer and ZnO Nanocrystal Interface Passivation Layer

In this paper, a Mg-doped ZnO (MZO) thin film is prepared by a simple solution process under ambient conditions and is used as the window layer for PbS solar cells due to a wide n-type bandgap. Moreover, a thin layer of ZnO nanocrystals (NCs) was deposited on the MZO to reduce carrier recombination at the interface for inverted PbS quantum dot solar cells with the configuration Indium Tin Oxides (ITO)/MZO/ZnO NC (w/o)/PbS/Au. The effect of film thickness and annealing temperature of MZO and ZnO NC on the performance of PbS quantum dot solar cells was investigated in detail. It was found that without the ZnO NC thin layer, the highest power conversion efficiency(PCE) of 5.52% was obtained in the case of a device with an MZO thickness of 50 nm. When a thin layer of ZnO NC was introduced between MZO and PbS quantum dot film, the PCE of the champion device was greatly improved to 7.06% due to the decreased interface recombination. The usage of the MZO buffer layer along with the ZnO NC interface passivation technique is expected to further improve the performance of quantum dot solar cells.

Understanding the effects of the co-sensitizing ratio on the surface potential, electron injection efficiency, and Förster resonance energy transfer

Multiple absorbers that function in different absorption regions (near infra-red (NIR) and UV-Visible (UV-Vis)) have been widely used in solar cell applications to enhance the light-harvesting.