The dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) have been regarded as one of the most promising new generation solar cells. Tremendous research efforts have been invested to improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion which is generally determined by the light harvesting efficiency, electron injection efficiency and undesirable electron lifetime. In this review, various characteristics of dye-...

Asymmetric zinc phthalocyanines with alkyl chain substituents formed highly efficient light-harvesting layers on a TiO2 surface. Dye-sensitized solar cells using PcS20 exhibited a record efficiency of 6.4% under one-sun irradiation.

A model for piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting with a piezoelectric cantilever beam is presented. The model incorporates expressions for variable geometry, tip mass, and material constants, and allows the parameterized determination of the voltage and power produced over a purely resistive load. The model is of a lumped-element form, with the base excitation acceleration and voltage repr...

The fundamental physical mechanisms of energy transfer in photosynthetic complexes is not yet fully understood. In particular, the degree of efficiency or sensitivity of these systems for energy transfer is not known given their realistic with surrounding photonic and phononic environments. One major problem in studying light-harvesting complexes has been the lack of an efficient method for sim...

Using a classical master equation that describes energy transfer over a given lattice, we explore how energy transfer efficiency along with the photon capturing ability depends on network connectivity, on transfer rates, and on volume fractions-the numbers and relative ratio of fluorescence chromophore components, e.g., donor (D), acceptor (A), and bridge (B) chromophores. For a one-dimensional...

This paper studies the energy conversion efficiency for a rectified piezoelectric power harvester. An analytical model is proposed, and an expression of efficiency is derived under steady-state operation. In addition, the relationship among the conversion efficiency, electrically induced damping and ac–dc power output is established explicitly. It is shown that the optimization criteria are dif...

A simulation model, which depicts the harvesting operation of biomass supply chain, is presented in this paper. ExtendSim8 simulation software was used for the development of the model. There are a number of sequential operations, i.e. mowing, drying, baling, picking-up, loading, and transporting, for harvesting biomass until the final product arrives at bio-energy generation plant. Different s...

In the near future, billions of wireless devices are expected to be operational. To enable the required machine to machine communications, two major problems must be addressed. How to obtain the required spectrum efficiency, and how to deliver the required power to these devices. The most promising answers to these questions are cognitive radio and energy harvesting, respectively. Energy harves...

Adaptive femtosecond pulse shaping in an evolutionary learning loop is applied to a bioinspired dyad molecule that closely mimics the early-time photophysics of the light-harvesting complex 2 (LH2) photosynthetic antenna complex. Control over the branching ratio between the two competing pathways for energy flow, internal conversion (IC) and energy transfer (ET), is realized. We show that by pu...

We theoretically study the efficiency of energy harvesting in linear exciton chains with an energy bias, where the initial excitation is taking place at the high-energy end of the chain and the energy is harvested (trapped) at the other end. The efficiency is characterized by means of the average time for the exciton to be trapped after the initial excitation. The exciton transport is treated a...