Advanced materials

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are nothing but cylindrical carbon molecules possessing a cylindrical structure similar to a tube and its diameter size is nanometer range. Some of its astonishing properties include are: excellent mechanical strength, high aspect ratio, unique electrical properties, highly stable, and good thermal conductor. Therefore, carbon nanotubes with novel properties offer many potential applications in the fields of energy, nano-electronics, optics, medical and many material applications.

The use of quantum dots (QDs) as photosensitizers has been spurred in the past years due to the demonstration of extremely high efficient carrier multiplication in colloidal QDs with internal quantum efficiency higher than 100%. One of the possible solar cell configurations to take advantage of this phenomenon is the quantum dot sensitized solar cell (QDSC), where a nanostructured metaloxides as TiO2 is photosensitized with QDs. However, it has not been shown so far that multiple carriers could be injected in external media.

In this paper we report a series of experimental investigations into the characterisation of and efficiency of energy transfer (ET) between a number of quantum dots, QDs, and linked organic dyes in a well-defined system that is designed to take into account the surface chemistry of the QDs and with small donor-acceptor distances. The fluorescent properties of QDs, in particular CdSe “cores” are highly dependent upon their surface chemistry.

Micro-sorbent traps referred to as a microtrap serve as integrated concentration-injection devices for continuous monitoring in gas phase streams. The application of carbon nanotubes as unique sorbents for the fabrication of microtraps for the nanoscale adsorption/desorption of organic molecules is presented in this paper. The microtrap application requires high adsorption capacity as well as easy desorbability; the latter being critical for injection module of integrated devices.