Near-field effects and energy transfer in hybrid metal-oxide nanostructures

• Ulrich Herr,
• Barat Achinuq,
• Cahit Benel,
• Giorgos Papageorgiou,
• Manuel Goncalves,
• Johannes Boneberg,
• Paul Leiderer,
• Paul Ziemann,
• Peter Marek and
• Horst Hahn

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 306–317, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.34

• supplying sufficient energy to present and future generations lies in techniques for using renewable energies, such as wind, water and direct sunlight. Direct conversion of sunlight by photovoltaics is an extremely attractive method of energy conversion, since the “final product” is supplied already in a

• ]. Nanotechnology holds great promises for the development of new devices in the field of advanced energy conversion. This became very apparent with the development of the dye-sensitized solar cells by M. Grätzel [2] more than 20 years ago. Other than conventional semiconductor photovoltaic cells, which depend on a

• , it is clear that the realization of nanotechnology-based approaches to efficient solar-energy conversion depends on a thorough understanding of the individual steps of the energy-transfer processes involved. As already mentioned, these include the absorption process itself, which may be modified by

Reduced electron recombination of dye-sensitized solar cells based on TiO₂ spheres consisting of ultrathin nanosheets with [001] facet exposed

• Hongxia Wang,
• Meinan Liu,
• Cheng Yan and
• John Bell

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 378–387, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.44

• [001] facet exposed, were assembled and characterized in terms of the device performance, the kinetics of electron transport and back reaction. It was found that the TiO2-spheres-based DSCs generated an energy conversion efficiency of 7.57%, which is comparable to the conventional TiO2 nanoparticles

Structural, electronic and photovoltaic characterization of multiwalled carbon nanotubes grown directly on stainless steel

• Luca Camilli,
• Manuela Scarselli,
• Silvano Del Gobbo,
• Paola Castrucci,
• Eric Gautron and
• Maurizio De Crescenzi

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 360–367, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.42

• ability of MWCNTs to serve as an energy-conversion material [9][10]. In this paper, we build up a simple photovoltaic device based on MWCNT–Si Schottky heterojunction. Photovoltaic measurements for the in-plane and top-down geometries of the device were performed. In particular, we find that the top-down

Nanophotonics, nano-optics and nanospectroscopy

• Alfred J. Meixner

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 499–500, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.53

• applications can be imagined, e.g., in materials sciences in the pursuit of efficient photovoltaic energy conversion; in the engineering sciences as quantum devices functioning as switches that truly operate at the quantum limit with single photons; or in the life sciences as local optical sensors to observe

Plasmonic nanostructures fabricated using nanosphere-lithography, soft-lithography and plasma etching

• Manuel R. Gonçalves,
• Taron Makaryan,
• Fabian Enderle,
• Stefan Wiedemann,
• Alfred Plettl,
• Othmar Marti and
• Paul Ziemann

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 448–458, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.49

• also enhance scattering at their resonances. This effect has been exploited in solar cells, for example, enhanced scattering by arrays of silver nanoparticles permits a thickness reduction of Si solar cells without compromising the intrinsic energy conversion efficiency [44][45][46]. Applications of