Analysis of the Inhomogeneous Growth of Sputtered Black TiO Thin Films.

Black titanium dioxide (B-TiO) is a highly active photoelectrochemical material compared to pure titanium dioxide due to its increased light absorption properties. Recently, we presented the deposition of thin-film B-TiO using an asymmetric bipolar reactive magnetron sputter process. The resulting samples exhibit excellent photoelectrochemical properties, which can be fine-tuned by varying the process parameters.

Efficient Thin Polymer Coating as a Selective Thermal Emitter for Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling.

Radiative cooling to subambient temperatures can be efficiently achieved through spectrally selective emission, which until now has only been realized by using complex nanoengineered structures. Here, a simple dip-coated planar polymer emitter derived from polysilazane, which exhibits strong selective emissivity in the atmospheric transparency window of 8-13 μm, is demonstrated. The 5 μm thin silicon oxycarbonitride coating has an emissivity of 0.

A vapor-phase-assisted growth route for large-scale uniform deposition of MoS monolayer films.

In this work a vapor-phase-assisted approach for the synthesis of monolayer MoS is demonstrated, based on the sulfurization of thin MoO precursor films in an HS atmosphere. We discuss the co-existence of various possible growth mechanisms, involving solid-gas and vapor-gas reactions. Different sequences were applied in order to control the growth mechanism and to obtain monolayer films.

Comparison of Ag and SiO2 Nanoparticles for Light Trapping Applications in Silicon Thin Film Solar Cells.

Plasmonic and photonic light trapping structures can significantly improve the efficiency of solar cells. This work presents an experimental and computational comparison of identically shaped metallic (Ag) and nonmetallic (SiO2) nanoparticles integrated to the back contact of amorphous silicon solar cells. Our results show comparable performance for both samples, suggesting that minor influence arises from the nanoparticle material.

Laser perforated ultrathin metal films for transparent electrode applications.

Transmittance and conductivity are the key requirements for transparent electrodes. Many optoelectronic applications require additional features such as mechanical flexibility and cost-efficient fabrication at low temperatures. Here we demonstrate a simple method to fabricate high performance transparent electrodes that is based on perforation of thin silver layers using picosecond laser pulses.