Highly ordered anodic titanium oxide (ATO) TiO2 nanotube film has been synthesized via a typical two-step anodization method. Following a reductive doping approach, metallic materials (copper and nickel) can be efficiently electrodeposited into the nanotubes. This versatile process yields reproducible tubular structures in ATO membranes, because of the conductive nature of crystallized TiO2, yielding promising potential for nanotemplate applications. In this paper, we present a dye-sensitized solar cell constructed by employing such ATO films. It is observed that the reductive doping treatment can also enhance the solar cell’s short current density and fill factor, resulting in an improved energy conversion efficiency.

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Structural, magnetic and transport properties of undoped and Mn-doped quasi one-dimensional ZnO nano-wires formed as dendrite crystals of different width have been studied. All Mn-doped nanowires (Mn content 16% and 27 %) exhibit a ferromagnetic behavior, which is significantly temperature dependent. A small magnetic signal detected up to the room temperature is supposed to be due to small amounts of magnetic impurities. Analysis of the temperature dependencies of magnetization shows that the observed magnetic properties can be caused by the host ferromagnetic matrix with Curie temperature TC  40 K.