12-04 :: April/May 2012

nanotimes News in Brief

A semiconductor chip that generates entangled photon pairs is friendlier to integration with other chip-based quantum components than any previous device. Researchers reporting in Physical Review Letters have taken a step toward making pairs of photons as part of an integrated circuit for photons that could ultimately include tiny lasers and optical “wires.” The team used a semiconductor chip.

Davide Castelvecchi: Focus: Photon Pairs Get More Commercial, In: Physics, Vol. 5, No. 42, April 13, 2012, DOI:10.1103/Physics.5.42: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v5/42

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In an article in Chemical Communications, chemists of the University of Basel describe a paradigm-shif- ting approach to sustainable and renewable pho- tovoltaic devices. Researchers Nik Hostettler and Ewald Schoenhofer in the group of Professors Ed Constable and Catherine Housecroft from the Uni- versity of Basel have made two breakthroughs. First, they have developed a new strategy for making and attaching colored materials to the surface of titanium dioxide nanoparticles and, second, they have shown for the first time that simple com- pounds of the readily available metal zinc may be used. Project Officer Dr Biljana Bozic says that the key discovery was finding a method for the simulta- neous synthesis of the dye and its attachment to the semiconductor surface.

Image: Comparative testing of ruthenium and zinc dye-sensitized solar cells. © University of Basel/Edwin Constable

Biljana Bozic-Weber, Edwin C. Constable, Nik Hostett- ler, Catherine E. Housecroft, Ralf Schmitt and Ewald Schönhofer: The d10

route to dye-sensitized solar cells:

step-wise assembly of zinc(II) photosensitizers on TiO2 surfaces, In: Chemical Communications, Advance Article,

May 01, 2012, DOI:10.1039/C2CC31729J: http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c2cc31729j