Recently, important efforts have been dedicated to the realization of a fascinating class of new photonic materials or metamaterials, known as photonic quasicrystals (PQCs), in which the lack of the translational symmetry is compensated by rotational symmetries not achievable by the conventional periodic crystals. As ever, more advanced functionality is demanded and one strategy is the introduc...

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 C.-S. Kim et al. (eds.), Hybrid and Hierarchical Composite Materials, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-12868-9_2 T. Krasia-Christoforou () Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Cyprus, 75, Kallipoleos Avenue, P.O. Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus e-mail: [email protected] Abstract Hybrid materials generated via the combina...

A new layered organic-inorganic nanocomposite material with an anti-parkinsonian active compound, L-3-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl) alanine (levodopa), intercalated into the inorganic interlayers of a Zn/Al-layered double hydroxide (LDH) was synthesized using a direct coprecipitation method. The resulting nanocomposite was composed of the organic moiety, levodopa, sandwiched between Zn/Al-LDH inorganic...

A series of hybrid cadmium salt/cationic surfactant layered nanocomposites containing different concentrations of cadmium sulphide was prepared by exchanging chloride by sulphide ions in the layered precursor CdXx(OH)y(CnTA)z in a solid phase/gas reaction, resulting in a series of layered species exhibiting stoichiometries corresponding to CdSvXx(OH)y(CnTA)z, constituted by two-dimensional CdCl...

This project is a fundamental study into the development of low-cost, thin film solar cells. It explores the fabrication of semiconductor nanocomposites for photovoltaics using nanostructured inorganic materials and atomic layer deposition (ALD). In thin film technologies, there exists a common problem with conversion efficiency due to poor materials quality: the photogenerated electrons and ho...

We present a review of the emerging class of hybrid solar cells based on organic-semiconductor (Group IV, III-V), nanocomposites, which states separately from dye synthesized, polymer-metal oxides and organic-inorganic (Group II-VI) nanocomposite photovoltaics. The structure of such hybrid cell comprises of an organic active material (p-type) deposited by coating, printing or spraying technique...

Atomized spray plasma deposition (ASPD) provides a single-step, low-temperature, and dry approach for the preparation of high refractive index hybrid polymer or polymer–inorganic nanocomposite coatings. Refractive indices as 1.936 at 635 nm wavelength have been obtained ASPD 4-bromostyrene/toluene–TiO2 layers containing low titania loadings. Thin films with any desired up to can be easily depos...

Polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) molecules when functionalized appropriately and dispersed in polymers show promise as monodisperse organic-inorganic hybrid nanocomposite materials characterized by superior mechanical properties. We report here molecular-simulation results for POSS-POSS radial distribution functions, potentials of mean force, and self-diffusion coefficients for POSS ...