Photovoltaic cells technology: principles and recent developments

Solar energy is one of the renewable energy resources that can be changed to the electrical energy with photovoltaic cells. This article accomplishes a comprehensive review on the emersion, underlying principles, types and performance improvements of these cells. Although there are some different categorizations about the solar cells, but in general, all of them can be divided to crystalline silicon solar cells, thin film technology, III–V multijunction cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, polymer solar cells and quantum structured solar cells. Thin film technology is investigated in two non-crystalline silicon solar cells and chalcogenide cells. We present a complete categorization of solar cells and discuss the recent developments of different types of solar cells. Indeed, this paper covers almost all of the development processes of solar cells from their emersion in 1939 up to now. Also, due to substantial effects of the light trapping techniques on the improvements of the solar cells, a comprehensive study has been carried out.     

Simultaneous spectrofluorimetric determination of levodopa and propranolol in urine using feed-forward neural networks assisted by principal component analysis

The simultaneous determination of levodopa (LD) and propranolol (PRO) using fluorescence spectrometric technique is described. The method involves measuring the natural fluorescence of these drugs in the micellar media of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) using principal component analysis-feed-forward neural networks (PC-FFNNs). Experimental conditions such as effect of pH and SDS concentration were optimized. Under the optimum conditions, the linear determination ranges of LD and PRO are 2.0 × 10⁻⁸ to 1.0 × 10⁻⁵ mol L⁻¹ and 3.6 × 10⁻⁹ to 1.8 × 10⁻⁶ mol L⁻¹, respectively. A set of synthetic binary mixtures of LD and PRO was prepared and their concentrations were predicted by the proposed method. Satisfactory results were obtained by the combination of fluorescence technique with chemometrics methods. The method was successfully applied to the determination of LD and PRO in tap water and in urine samples.     

Ultra-compact all-optical phase-controlled NAND,OR, XOR,XNOR, and NOT multi-function logic gate

Optical and Quantum Electronics - A theoretical analysis of the modulational instability (MI) in a nonlinear oppositely directional coupler with one channel fabricated from nonlinear medium having...     

All-Optical Multi-Mode Interference Switch Using Non-Linear Directional Coupler as a Passive Phase Shifter

Abstract

This article presents an all-optical multi-mode interference switch in which the non-linear directional coupler is utilized to realize a passive phase shifter. The proposed structure can be used either as a 1 × 2 or a 2 × 2 switch, with two inputs applied simultaneously in the latter case. The operation of the device is mainly based on the phase difference of the inputs of the multi-mode interference section. The beam propagation method is used for the design and simulation of the structure. The simulation results approve the low sensitivity on wavelength and fabrication tolerances. The crosstalk of the structure is equal to ?31.6 dB.     

Effect of additives and precursor chemical structure on crystalline shape and optical properties of TiO2

This paper proposes a new simple approach for synthetic of shape-defined anatase nanocuboids TiO₂ by using combination of titanium tetra isopropoxide (TTIP) and orthotitanic acid (H₄TiO₄) as titanium precursor. In first step by adding precursor to ethanol solution mixed with HCl the primary sol has been prepared, therefore two other different films by adding Methylcellulose (MC) as a carbon containing material and adding TiO₂ nanopowder as nanofiller have been prepared and properties of thin film as a function of parameters of annealing temperature and additives, have been discussed. The films were deposited on glass substrates and characterized by using UV–vis spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). SEM results show that optical properties of TiO₂ thin films were changed by baking in 300, 400 and 500 °C as annealing temperature. Moreover, they indicate that the additives have strong effect on anatase structure and therefore influence the optical properties.     

Simultaneous spectrophotometric determination of levodopa and carbidopa in pharmaceutical formulations and water samples by using mean centering of ratio spectra and H-point standard addition methods

Two spectrophotometric methods are described for the simultaneous determination of binary mixtures of carbidopa and levodopa in pharmaceutical formulations, without prior separation steps, using the mean centering of ratio spectra and H-point standard addition methods (HPSAM). The methods are based on the difference in the absorption spectra for the products of the reaction of carbidopa and levodopa with 4-aminobenzoic acid in the presence of periodate ion at pH 4.0. The methods allow rapid and accurate determination of carbidopa and levodopa. The results showed that the methods were capable to simultaneous determination of 0.30-10.00 microg ml(-1) and 0.50-10.00 microg ml(-1) each of carbidopa and levodopa. The proposed methods were successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of carbidopa and levodopa in pharmaceutical samples.     

Rapid monitoring and sensitive determination of DDT and its metabolites in water sample using solid-phase extraction followed by ion mobility spectrometry

Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) as an organochlorine compound has been globally used as a pesticide for controlling soil-dwelling insects and treating diseases such as malaria and typhus. The degradation products of DDT and its metabolites have also negative effects on the environment. The present study has investigated the determination of DDT and its metabolites in water sample using ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) as a rapid and sensitive detection technique. For this purpose, DDT and its metabolites were extracted using reverse phase solid-phase extraction (SPE) from water samples. The samples were then recovered by eluting with methanol and finally, quantified using the corona discharge IMS technique. Injection and oven temperatures and the effect of dopant were optimized as experimental parameters influencing both detection and determination efficiencies. Degradation of DDT in IMS drift tube was studied and reduced mobility values of DDT and its metabolites were calculated. The developed method was validated using water sample to obtain good results for the determination of DDT at low levels (1 ng ml^?1) while spiked recoveries were obtained to be between 95.0–96.7%. The proposed method based on IMS proved to be a simple, inexpensive, rapid and sensitive procedure for the fast monitoring and determination of DDT and its main metabolites in water sample.     

Improvement in IBC-silicon solar cell performance by insertion of highly doped crystalline layer at heterojunction interfaces

By inserting a thin highly doped crystalline silicon layer between the base region and amorphous silicon layer in an interdigitated back-contact(IBC) silicon solar cell, a new passivation layer is investigated. The passivation layer performance is characterized by numerical simulations. Moreover, the dependence of the output parameters of the solar cell on the additional layer parameters(doping concentration and thickness) is studied. By optimizing the additional passivation layer in terms of doping concentration and thickness, the power conversion efficiency could be improved by a factor of2.5%, open circuit voltage is increased by 30 mV and the fill factor of the solar cell by 7.4%. The performance enhancement is achieved due to the decrease of recombination rate, a decrease in solar cell resistivity and improvement of field effect passivation at heterojunction interface. The above-mentioned results are compared with reported results of the same conventional interdigitated back-contact silicon solar cell structure. Furthermore, the effect of a-Si:H/c-Si interface defect density on IBC silicon solar cell parameters with a new passivation layer is studied. The additional passivation layer also reduces the sensitivity of output parameter of solar cell to interface defect density.     

Vacuum heating evaluation for plasmas of exponentially decreasing density profile

Ultra-short pulse lasers have opened a regime of laser-plasma interaction where plasmas have scale lengths shorter than the laser wavelength and allow the possibility of generating near-solid density plasmas. The interaction of high-intensity laser beams with sharply bounded high-density and small scale length plasmas is considered. Absorption of the laser energy associated with the mechanism of dragging electrons out of the plasma into the vacuum and sending them back into the plasma with the electric field component along the density gradient, so called vacuum heating, is studied. An exponentially decreasing electron density profile is assumed. The vector potential of the electromagnetic field propagating through the plasma is calculated and the behaviour of the electric and magnetic components of the electromagnetic field is studied. The fraction of laser power absorbed in this process is calculated and plotted versus the laser beam incidence angle, illumination energy, and the plasma scale length.     

A novel and efficient approach for the amidation of C-terminal peptides

A highly efficient and practical synthesis of C-terminal amidated peptides has been developed. According to this approach, amidation of the C-terminus of peptides was carried out using NH₄Cl, alkylammonium chloride (RNH₃Cl) and semicarbazide hydrochloride in the presence of TBTU as a coupling reagent and a tertiary amine as the base at room temperature in good to high yields. Some opioid peptides such as enkephalin derivatives were synthesized according to this novel method.