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Its versatility rises due the possible monolithic integration on Si-platforms making it an ideal material in domains of optoelectronics, and high speed electronic devices. Sn incorporation in Ge allows straightforward band-gap engineering enabling to enhance the electron and hole mobilities, and for a sufficient Sn amount an indirect-to-direct band-gap transition occurs. Germanium-Tin alloy is a unique class semiconductor gaining a strong attention because of its significant electrical and optical properties.
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Future research expectations in this field and energy management are also discussed.
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By applying and learning from biological materials, natural hierarchical structure, surface topography, and biochemical process, enhanced performance and stability for energy devices can be achieved. This review, taking lithium batteries, nanogenerators and solar cells as examples, provides a summary and discussion of how the bio-inspired strategies can influence the electrode/device design and the corresponding interface interactions. For these devices, efficient and stable electrode/electrolyte interfaces, modified interactions, and new functions are desired, which remain a challenge to fully meet the requirement of the rapidly developed electronic industry. In recent years, numerous bioinspired and biomimetic strategies are devoted to design energy storage and harvesting devices. Knowledge learned from nature demonstrates that system performance can be enhanced and optimized by hierarchical structural design which has dramatically expanded implications for synthetic materials, from design to implementation. Moreover, coating the U-ZnO NWs with a thin TiO2 layer decreased the charge recombination and consequently enhanced the photovoltaic efficiency. We found that assembling organized layers of U-ZnO NWs significantly increased the surface area and provided better photon absorption. The ordered layers of U-ZnO NWs were then coated with a thin layer of TiO2 by atomic layer deposition, and topped with a ~ 9-14 µm thick layer of anatase TiO2 NPs. Two to four layers of U-ZnO NWs were synthesized by using PS of 1 and 5 µm in diameter. Here, we describe the design of a 3D architecture based on polystyrene spheres (PS) coated with ordered multilayers of urchin-like ZnO NWs (U-ZnO NWs) to be used as a high surface area nanostructure photoanode for dye-sensitized solar cells. To overcome this limitation, the light harvesting efficiencies must be improved by increasing the total NW array surface area, without increasing too much the traveled distance of electrons. In dye-sensitized solar cells, the photovoltaic efficiency of nanowires (NW) is still limited by their surface area and loss of light absorption compared with nanoparticle (NP) architectures. The addition of a thin TiO2 blocking layer decreases the recombination of charges in such a high surface area nanostructure.
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Using urchin-like ZnO nanowires as building blocks can improve the light-scattering and provide a higher surface area with a great control of the nanowire dimensions to increase the dye loading and reduce the electron collection path. An increase in the cell open-circuit voltage (VOC) and an improvement in the conversion efficiency were observed when the urchin-like ZnO building blocks were coated with 10 nm thick TiO2 ALD shells in combination with 10 μm thick top layer of TiO2 nanoparticles of 15.8 nm size. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were prepared, for the first time, from arrays of urchin-like ZnO nanowire building blocks covered with a thin layer of anatase TiO2 by atomic layer deposition (ALD). We applied the core-shell concept to an urchin-inspired ZnO nanowire photoanode building block as a means to increase the electron transport and reduce recombination between nanowire and electrolyte.