The concentrations of ovine placental lactogen (oPL) have been determined in maternal plasma, umbilical cord plasma, and allantoic fluid by an homologous radioimmunoassay for oPL which is sensitive to 0-1 ng hormone. Ovine placental lactogen was first detected in maternal plasma at 41-50 days of gestation and reached a peak concentration of 2547 +/- 226 (S.E.M.) ng/ml at 121-130 days in ewes with singleton gestations. The oPL concentration in cord plasma was 336-4 +/- 60-3 ng/ml and in allantoic fluid was 29-6 +/- 6-4 ng/ml. After surgical removal of the placenta, oPL disappeared from maternal plasma with a half-life of 29-1 +/- 1-3 min.

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The growth of InAs quantum dots (QDs) by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE) for use in GaAs based photovoltaics devices was investigated. Growth of InAs quantum dots was optimized according to their morphology and photoluminescence using growth temperature and V/III ratio. The optimized InAs QDs had sizes near 7×40 nm with a dot density of 5(±0.5)×1010 cm-2. These optimized QDs were incorporated into GaAs based p-i-n solar cell structures. Cells with single and multiple (5x) layers of QDs were embedded in the i-region of the GaAs p-i-n cell structure. An array of 1 cm2 solar cells was fabricated on these wafers, IV curves collected under 1 sun AM0 conditions, and the spectral response measured from 300-1100 nm. The quantum efficiency for each QD cell clearly shows sub-bandgap conversion, indicating a contribution due to the QDs. Unfortunately, the overarching result of the addition of quantum dots to the baseline p-i-n GaAs cells was a decrease in efficiency. However, the addition of thin GaP strain compensating layers between the QD layers, was found to reduce this efficiency degradation and significantly enhance the subgap conversion in comparison to the un-compensated quantum dot cells.