Event-by-event fl uctuations of electric charge have been proposed as signals of quark-gluon plasma creation in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, but can not be confi rmed in experiments. We apply a quark molecular dynamics model which describes dynamically the transition from a gas of interacting quarks to hadrons via the formation of colour neutral clusters. We fi nd a corresponding cha...

A photosynthetic organism is subjected to photo-oxidative stress when more light energy is absorbed than is used in photosynthesis. In the light, highly reactive singlet oxygen can be produced via triplet chlorophyll formation in the reaction centre of photosystem II and in the antenna system. In the antenna, triplet chlorophyll is produced directly by excited singlet chlorophyll, while in the ...

In this work interdigitated heterojunction photovoltaic devices were manufactured. A donor layer of P3HT nanopillars was fabricated by soft nanoimprinting using nanoporous anodic alumina templates. Subsequently, the PC70BM acceptor layer was deposited by spin coating on top of the P3HT nanopillars using a solvent that would not dissolve any of the previous material. Anisole solvent was used bec...

Organic long-persistent luminescence (OLPL) was achieved through photo-induced charge separation, accumulation, and emission from recombination. The presence of thermal activation processes in the OLPL system confirmed.

A bipolar charge transport model is employed to investigate the remarkable reduction in dc conductivity of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) based material filled with uncoated nanofillers (reported in the first part of this work). The effect of temperature on charge transport is considered and the model outcomes are compared with measured conduction currents. The simulations reveal that the cont...

Charge separation occurs in a pair of tightly coupled chlorophylls at the heart of photosynthetic reaction centers of both plants and bacteria. Recently it has been shown that quantum coherence can, in principle, enhance the efficiency of a solar cell, working like a quantum heat engine. Here, we propose a biological quantum heat engine (BQHE) motivated by Photosystem II reaction center (PSII R...

The recombination dynamics of ion pairs generated upon electron transfer quenching of perylene in the first singlet excited state by tetracyanoethylene in acetonitrile is quantitatively described by the extended unified theory of photoionization/recombination. The extension incorporates the hot recombination of the ion pair passing through the level-crossing point during its diffusive motion al...

The performance of high-efficient crystalline silicon (c-Si) based solar cells is, besides bulk recombination, limited by the recombination losses on both c-Si surfaces. Dangling bonds at the c-Si surface are the defects governing interface recombination irrespective of the overlaying passivation layer (i.e. SiO2, SixNy, a-Si:H). Dangling bonds are also the predominant defects governing recombi...

A key consideration for the efficient operation of hybrid solar cells based upon conjugated polymers and inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals is charge transport in the nanocrystal phase. Here we report the results of a study into the charge transport kinetics of polymer/nanocrystal solar cells based on blends poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) with either CdSe nano-dots or CdSe nano-tetrapods. Tran...