Rose Bengal sensitized bilayered photoanode of nano-crystalline TiO–CeO for dye-sensitized solar cell application

There are two traditional ways to read Kant’s claim that every event necessarily has a cause: the weaker every-event some-cause (WCP) and the stronger same-cause same-effect (SCP) causal principles. The debate on whether and where he subscribes to the SCP has focused on the Analogies in the Critique of Pure Reason (Guyer, Allison, and Watkins) and on the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Friedman). By analysing the arguments and conclusions of both the Analogies and the Postulates, as well as the two Latin principles non datur casus and non datur fatum that summarise their results, I will argue that the SCP is actually demonstrated in the Postulates section of the First Critique

The Complex Degradation Mechanism of Copper Electrodes on Lead Halide Perovskites

Lead halide perovskite solar cells have reached power conversion efficiencies during the past few years that rival those of crystalline silicon solar cells, and there is a concentrated effort to commercialize them. The use of gold electrodes, the current standard, is prohibitively costly for commercial application. Copper is a promising low cost electrode material that has shown good stability in perovskite solar cells with selective contacts. Furthermore, it has the potential to be self passivating through the formation of CuI, a copper salt which is also used as a hole selective material. Based on these opportunities, we investigated the interface reactions between lead halide perovskites and copper in this work. Specifically, copper was deposited on the perovskite surface, and the reactions were followed in detail using synchrotron based and in house photoelectron spectroscopy. The results show a rich interfacial chemistry with reactions starting upon deposition and, with the exposure to oxygen and moisture, progress over many weeks, resulting in significant degradation of both the copper and the perovskite. The degradation results not only in the formation of CuI, as expected, but also in the formation of two previously unreported degradation products. The hope is that a deeper understanding of these processes will aid in the design of corrosion resistant copper based electrode

Growth of Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides by Solvent Evaporation Technique

Due to their physical properties and potential applications in energy conversion and storage, transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have garnered substantial interest in recent years. Among this class of materials, TMDs based on molybdenum, tungsten, sulfur, and selenium are particularly attractive due to their semiconducting properties and the availability of bottom-up synthesis techniques. Here we report a method which yields high-quality crystals of transition-metal diselenide and ditelluride compounds (PtTe2, PdTe2, NiTe2, TaTe2, TiTe2, RuTe2, PtSe2, PdSe2, NbSe2, TiSe2, VSe2, ReSe2) from their solid solutions, via vapor deposition from a metal-saturated chalcogen melt. Additionally, we show the synthesis of rare-earth-metal polychalcogenides and NbS2 crystals using the aforementioned process. Most of the crystals obtained have a layered CdI2 structure. We have investigated the physical properties of selected crystals and compared them to state of the art findings reported in the literature. Remarkably, the charge density wave transition in 1T-TiSe2 and 2H-NbSe2 crystals is well-defined at TCDW ≈ 200 and 33 K, respectively. Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and electron diffraction are used to directly access the electronic and crystal structures of PtTe2 single crystals and yield state of the art measurements. © 2020 American Chemical Society.M.A.-H. acknowledges support from the VR starting grant 2018-05339 and KL1824/6. The crystal growth experiments were supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project 19-12-00414. The work has been supported by the program 211 of the Russian Federation Government agreements 02.A03.21.0006 and 02.A03.21.0011, by the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University. We acknowledge MAX IV Laboratory for time on Beamline Bloch under Proposal 20190335. Research conducted at MAX IV, a Swedish national user facility, is supported by the Swedish Research council under contract 2018-07152 the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems under contract 2018-04969, and Formas under contract 2019-02496. We acknowledge ARPES experiment support from Craig Polley (MAX IV), Maciej Dendzik (KTH) Antonija Grubisic-Cabo (KTH) and Oscar Tjernberg (KTH). H.R., D.P. and G.J.M. acknowledge the Swedish Research Council (2018-06465, 2018-04330) and the Swedish Energy Agency (P43549-1) for financial support