promising light absorber materials, demon strating low-cost solution processing, ease of fabrication, and outstanding optoelectronic properties. [1,2] Since the first report on the perovskite solar cells (PSCs) employing methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI 3 ), [3] their power conversion efficiency (PCE) has now exceeded 25% for small-area cells. [4,5] The high efficiency of PSCs is achieved by tuning the perovskite layer through compositional engineering, [6][7][8] surface passivation, [9][10][11][12][13] and/or by using various additives. [14][15][16] Besides component engineering of the perovskite layer, a lot of works have been devoted to the development of efficient charge transport layers. [17][18][19][20][21] Particularly, the electron transport layers (ETLs) play an important role in realizing efficient and stable PSCs. [22,23] Thus far, titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) is a widely applied ETL in PSCs but it suffers from low conductivity and high surface defect density. [24] Among alternative ETLs, zinc oxide (ZnO) has been regarded as a convenient candidate due to its high electron mobility and well-matched energy level with perovskite material. [25,26] This Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has been considered as an efficient method to deposit high quality and uniform thin films of various electron transport materials for perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Here, the effect of deposition sequence in the ALD process of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) films on the performance and stability of PSCs is investigated. Particularly, the surface of AZO film is terminated by diethylzinc (DEZ)/H 2 O (AZO-1) or trimethylaluminum (TMA)/H 2 O pulse (AZO-2), and investigated with surface-sensitive X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy technique. It is observed that AZO-2 significantly enhances the thermal stability of the upcoming methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI 3 ) layer and facilitates charge transport at the interface as evidenced by photoluminescence spectroscopes and favorable interfacial band alignment. Finally, planar-type PSC with AZO-2 layer exhibits a champion power conversion efficiency of 18.09% with negligible hysteresis and retains 82% of the initial efficiency after aging for 100 h under ambient conditions (relative humidity 40 ± 5%). These results highlight the importance of atomic layer engineering for developing efficient and stable PSCs.
Recently, an unprecedented growth in the internet of things (IoT) is being observed, which is becoming the main driver for the entire semiconductor industry. Reliable maintenance and servicing of the IoT is becoming challenging, knowing that the IoT nodes outnumber the human population by a factor of seven. Energy harvesting (EH) can overcome those difficulties, delivering the energy-autonomous IoT nodes to the market. EH converts natural or waste energies (vibrations, heat losses, air flows, light, etc.) into useful energy. This article explores the performance of ZnO nanowires under mechanical actuation to characterize their piezoelectric performance. ZnO nanowires were fabricated using ALD and a subsequent chemical bath growth. AISI 301 steel was used as a substrate of the EH device to better fit the mechanical requirements for the piezoelectric generator. We determined that a thin layer of another oxide below ZnO provides outstanding adhesion. The samples were submitted under repetitive mechanical stress in order to characterize the output piezovoltage for different conditions. They exhibited a piezoelectric signal which was stable after hundreds of actuations. This shows good promise for the use of our device based on ZnO, an Earth-abundant and non-toxic material, as an alternative to the conventional and popular but harmful and toxic PZT. The designed measurement setup demonstrated that a AISI 301 steel substrate coated with ZnO deposited by ALD and grown in a chemical bath has promising performance as a piezoelectric material. Characterized ZnO samples generate up to 80 nJ of energy during 55 second runs under matched load conditions, which is sufficient to supply a modern IoT node.
In this work, we present the results of defects analysis concerning ZnO and Al2O3 layers deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. The analysis was performed by the X-band electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) methods. The layers were either tested as-deposited or after 30 min heating at 300 °C and 450 °C in Ar atmosphere. TEM and XPS investigations revealed amorphous nature and non-stoichiometry of aluminum oxide even after additional high-temperature treatment. EPR confirmed high number of defect states in Al2O3. For ZnO, we found the as-deposited layer shows ultrafine grains that start to grow when high temperature is applied and that their crystallinity is also improved, resulting in good agreement with XPS results which indicated lower number of defects on the layer surface.
We present the results of ab initio calculations of gas adsorption processes on graphene. Static density functional theory framework is used to obtain adsorption energies of several species on a Stone-Wales defected graphene monolayer. The Van der Waals interaction is taken into account by a semi-empirical correction. Sites closer to the defect are found to induce stronger adsorption compared to sites further away, where the graphene crystal structure is intact. The Car-Parrinello ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are performed at high temperatures. CH3 is found to be stably physisorbed or chemisorbed at 300 K.
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