Indium tin oxide (ITO) films are widely used as transparent conducting electrodes in solar cells, gas sensors, and car windows because of their high electrical conductivity and good optical transparency in the visible region. In this work, ITO thin films were prepared by cathodic radio-frequency (RF) sputtering using an ITO target with 90% In2O3 and 10% SnO2. The structural properties were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), and X-ray reflectometry (XRR). Electrical measurements were performed by applying the four-point method and studying the Hall Effect. Finally, optical properties were taken by the UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometry. The effect of the RF power and deposition time on optical and electrical properties was investigated. It is shown that by using a RF power of 110–80 W, one can prepare crystalline samples with low resistivity, which is an aimed property for TCO semiconductors. Electrical measurements revealed that the resistivity decreases by increasing the RF power and/or the deposition time.

Copper oxide nanowires (CuO NWs) were synthesized by thermally oxidizing copper foils at various heating rates. It has been shown that both monoclinic CuO and cubic Cu2O phases were grown on the copper surface with NW diameters of almost 200 nm for all samples. While NWs were shown to be dense for low heating rates, they end up being broken for quick heating. The underlying growth mechanism was described basing on a detailed comprehensive study, and the effect of the heating rate was explained by considering the thermal shock effect and in-plane tensile stresses on curved surfaces. This study contributes to the research for suitable methods for the use of recyclable metals in technological applications. In particular, copper oxide NWs were deposited, for the first time, on FTO/glass substrates, and the optical characterization revealed that this method is a promising way to improve the surface contact for solar cells and catalytic applications.

A biosensor structure based on a ternary photonic crystal (TPC) containing a defect is designed and simulated. This proposed biosensor detects the concentration of glucose in human urine. Based on the transfer matrix method, we theoretically studied the transmission spectra through the TPC presuming blood samples with different refractive indices (RIs) infiltrated into the defect layer of the proposed structures. By varying the concentration of glucose in the urine, the RI of the urine is changed, which in turn changes the sensor's output response; both transmission response and resonance wavelength are affected. We evaluated average sensitivity (S) for the number of periods at different values N for optimization purposes. Our results show that the biosensor has performance parameters for a period value N ¼ 6. Indeed, a value of 1033 nm of full width at half maximum photonic bandgap can be observed with a S of 965 nm∕RIU. The quality factor is 1892.542 and the figure of merit is 756.86 RIU −1 . The proposed biosensor can be a miniaturized structure with extreme sensitivity in the concentration of glucose detection models © 2023 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

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