Wound care has come through various trials and errors with primitive cultures applying old age techniques and knowledge. Recent research has shown that the moist environment promotes wound healing than the dry. In the present research, hydrogel membranes were fabricated by esterification of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) with starch and glutaraldehyde as a cross-linker. The essential oils (clove oil, Oregano oil and tea tree oil) have been incorporated in PVA/Starch based hydrogel membranes. The aim was to achieve optimized anti-bacterial activity and mechanical strength. The anti-bacterial testing was performed using the disc diffusion method. The maximum antibacterial activity for fabricated hydrogels was attained by addition of 0.1 mL clove oil in PVA/Starch hydrogel was 39±0.57 mm and 37±0.29 mm for MRSA and E.Coli, respectively. The FTIR results presented the occurrence of -OH group in hydrogel membrane. The SEM results showed around dense nature of membranes with having an antibacterial agent in it or not.Mechanical examination of hydrogel membranes presented suitable tensile strength of 19.36 MPa for 0.1 mL Clove oil. Furthermore, water vapour transmission rate (WVTR) and moisture retention capability (MRC) for 0.1 mL clove oil was 36.22 g/m 2 h and 95.50%, respectively. The experimental conclusion nominated that fabricated hydrogel articulates good antibacterial, mechanical and physical properties that it could be used in wound dressing applications. The best results were obtained for clove oil using 0.1 mL as an antibacterial agent.

In contrast to zero-dimensional (0D), one-dimensional (1D), and even their bulk equivalents, in two-dimensional (2D) layered materials, charge carriers are confined across thickness and are empowered to move across the planes. The features of 2D structures, such as quantum confinement, high absorption coefficient, high surface-to-volume ratio, and tunable bandgap, make them an encouraging contestant in various fields such as electronics, energy storage, catalysis, etc. In this review, we provide a gentle introduction to the 2D family, then a brief description of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), mainly focusing on MoS2, followed by the crystal structure and synthesis of MoS2, and finally wet chemistry methods. Later on, applications of MoS2 in dye-sensitized, organic, and perovskite solar cells are discussed. MoS2 has impressive optoelectronic properties; due to the fact of its tunable work function, it can be used as a transport layer, buffer layer, and as an absorber layer in heterojunction solar cells. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.40% as an absorber and 13.3% as carrier transfer layer have been reported for MoS2-based organic and perovskite solar cells, respectively. Moreover, MoS2 is a potential replacement for the platinum counter electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells with a PCE of 7.50%. This review also highlights the incorporation of MoS2 in silicon-based heterostructures where graphene/MoS2/n-Si-based heterojunction solar cell devices exhibit a PCE of 11.1%.

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V2O5/MWCNT hybrid system has been developed and investigated as cathode in LIBs. The developed electrode shows superior performance as compare to pristine V2O5 and V2O5/rGO hybrid structure due to the synergy between V2O5 and MWCNT.

Light trapping has now been recognized as an essential element of highly efficient solar cells. A large number of sophisticated nanostructures have been developed and optically characterized, many of which have been aimed at thin-film silicon technology. It is still an open question whether such nanostructures are beneficial for thick devices, however, especially, since highly efficient solar cells employ >100 μm thick absorber materials and wet etched micron-sized pyramids for light trapping. In this paper, we study and compare the optical and electrical performances of binary quasirandom nanostructures with pyramidal structures to address this question. We show that, while simulations indicate that pyramids have better optical performance, the best overall performance observed experimentally was achieved with binary nanostructures. We found that the experimental short-circuit current for a solar cell patterned with a quasirandom nanostructure is 3.2 mA/cm 2 higher than the current observed with pyramids. We attribute this higher current to a better balance between optical performance and surface recombination achieved by the binary nanostructures. This result indicates that binary nanostructures may be beneficial even for thick solar cells.

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