All-organic-based photovoltaic solar cells have attracted considerable attention because of their low-cost processing and short energy payback time. In such systems the primary dissociation of an optical excitation into a pair of photocarriers has been recently shown to be extremely rapid and efficient, but the physical reason for this remains unclear. Here, two-dimensional photocurrent excitat...

In this paper, we compared for the first time the dynamics of photogenerated holes in BiVO4 photoanodes with and without CoPi surface modification, employing transient absorption and photocurrent measurements on microsecond to second timescales. CoPi surface modification is known to cathodically shift the water oxidation onset potential; however, the reason for this improvement has not until no...

Tandem solar cells consisting of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon junctions with the top junction nanopatterned as a two-dimensional photonic crystal are studied. Broadband light trapping, detailed electron/hole transport, and photocurrent matching modulation are considered. It is found that the absorptances of both junctions can be significantly increased by properly engineering the duty...

A new amphiphilic hemicyanine dye, (E)-1,3,3-trimethyl-2-[2-(4-N-methylN-hexadecylaminophenyl)ethenyl]indolinium iodide (MHID) has been synthesized and successfully transferred onto a semiconducting transparent indium-tin oxide (ITO) electrode by Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) techniques. The photoelectric conversion properties of the dye MHID monolayer fabricated ITO electrode have been investigated i...

We report the observation of magnetoelectric photocurrent generated via direct interband transitions in an InGaAs/InAlAs two-dimensional electron gas by a linearly polarized incident light. The electric current is proportional to the in-plane magnetic field, which unbalances the velocities of the photoexcited carriers with opposite spins and consequently generates the electric current from a hi...

Graphene has become one of the most promising materials for future optoelectronics due to its ultrahigh charge-carrier mobility, high light transmission, and universal absorbance in the near-infrared and visible spectral ranges. However, a zero band gap and ultrafast recombination of the photoexcited electron-hole pairs limit graphene's potential in photovoltaic generation. Recent studies have ...

We analyze energy consumption in optical modulators operated in depletion and intended for low-power interconnect applications. We include dynamic dissipation from charging modulator capacitance and net energy consumption from absorption and photocurrent, both in reverse and small forward bias. We show that dynamic dissipation can be independent of static bias, though only with specific kinds o...

Fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) is widely used as a substrate in the synthesis of a photo-reactive semiconductor electrode for solar water splitting. The hematite film on the surface of the FTO substrate annealed at 700 °C showed an enhanced photocurrent value with a maximum photocurrent of 0.39 mA cm(-2) at 1.23 V vs. RHE under 1 sun illumination. This is a much enhanced photocurrent value of t...

While ultrafast spectroscopy with photocurrent detection was almost unknown before 2012, in the last 3 years, a number of research groups from different fields have independently developed ultrafast electric probe approaches and reported promising pilot studies. Here, we discuss these recent advances and provide our perspective on how photocurrent detection successfully overcomes many limitatio...