Coupled analysis of steady-state and dynamic characteristics of dye-sensitized solar cells for determination of conduction band movement and recombination parameters.

A new research strategy for determining the conduction band movement of TiO(2) films and charge recombination between electrons in the TiO(2) film and electron acceptors in the electrolyte was proposed. Steady-state short-circuit current density versus open-circuit voltage was employed to attain the exchange current density and recombination reaction order. Transient photovoltage decay and open-circuit voltage decay measurements were carried out to obtain the energetic distribution of trapped electrons.

Real-time PCR microfluidic devices with concurrent electrochemical detection.

Electrochemistry-based detection methods hold great potential towards development of hand-held nucleic-acid analyses instruments. In this work, we demonstrate the implementation of in situ electrochemical (EC) detection method in a microfluidic flow-through EC-qPCR (FTEC-qPCR) device, where both the amplification of the target nucleic-acid sequence and subsequent EC detection of the PCR amplicon are realized simultaneously at selected PCR cycles in the same device. The FTEC-qPCR device utilizes methylene blue (MB), an electroactive DNA intercalator, for electrochemical signal measurements in the presence of PCR reagent components.