No abstract

Inverse opal TiO2 may offer a novel and promising solution for enhancing the light harvesting efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Its large interconnected pores enable a better penetration of the dye sensitizers via the matrix pores, making this material surpasses the efficiency of conventional TiO2 electrodes. Moreover, it also exhibits a photonic band gap that may enable a significant change in its dye absorbance by the adjustment of the photon localization near the red edge of the photonic band gap to the position of dye absorption. In this study, we report a simple method of fabrication of inverse opal TiO2, wherein the voids in artificial opal latex are filled with nanosized TiO2 particles by adding a drop of TiCl4 into the latex matrix, hydrolyzing, and heating. In this process, we investigate the effect of different heat treatment times on the properties of inverse opal TiO2. Photoacoustic (PA) characterization shows that longer heat treatment times could produce more defect sites. The presence of defects causes the inhibition of electron transfer and results in a decrease in incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE). CdSe quantum dots were adsorbed onto inverse opal TiO2 by chemical deposition. The blue shift of PA spectra relative to the bulk CdSe and the gain in IPCE were clearly observed. This result indicates the quantum confinement effect and photosensitization of CdSe quantum dots.

Two types of microwave filters, metallic powder filters and a filter using a resistive coaxial cable, were tested. Attenuation of the metallic powder filters using copper or stainless steel (SUS304L) was measured at 300 K, 77 K, and 4.2 K, and it was found that SUS304L powder of nominal 30 m grain size gives best result as the microwave filter for single electron tunneling (SET) experiments. Attenuation of a coaxial filter, or Thermocoax with SMA connectors attached at both ends is larger at low temperatures than that at room temperatures, and the temperature dependence of the attenuation does not agree with Zorin's model. The filter arrangement in our cryostat designed for SET experiments, is also reported.

We report very-low-noise, fast-response, middle-scale multiplexing in a microwave superconducting quantum interference device multiplexer (MW-Mux) as a transition-edge sensor (TES) readout. Our MW-Mux is able to read 40 channels with 500 kHz sampling and has a low readout noise of 0.9 μΦ0/Hz (where Φ0 is the magnetic flux quantum), equivalent to 9 pA/Hz. By contrast, a multiplexer of less than 10 pixels with 500 kHz sampling and ∼2 μΦ0/Hz readout noise has so far been reported in the literature. Owing to the 500 kHz sampling, our MW-Mux exhibits a fast response to detect a TES pulse with a rise time around 12 μs. We demonstrated simultaneous readout of 38 pixels from an array of x-ray TES microcalorimeters. The measured full-width values at half-maximum spectral resolution ranged from 2.79 to 4.56 eV, with a median value of 3.30 eV at 5.9 keV, including a ∼10% contribution of readout noise, i.e., 0.9–1.7 eV.

The crystal growth of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) adsorbed on nanostructured TiO 2 photoelectrodes is important not only for crystallographic studies but also for improving the photovoltaic efficiency of semiconductor-sensitized solar cells. In this study, nanoparticle, inverse opal, and nanotube TiO 2 electrodes are prepared. These electrodes are then adsorbed with CdSe QDs as photosensitizers to investigate crystal growth. The average diameters of the CdSe QDs can be estimated from the photoacoustic (PA) spectra. When the adsorption time increases, the CdSe QD diameter increases and then shows saturation. Normal solution growth plus suppression (negative growth) can be obtained by PA analysis. Both of them depend on the morphology of TiO 2 electrodes and the final solution concentration for the CdSe QD preparation.