Magnetic nanoparticles decorated with gold nanoclusters–applications in cancer theranostics

Nanomedicine presents exciting new opportunities for the detection and treatment of cancer. Current cancer imaging methods and treatment approaches in clinics frequently fall short of entirely curing cancer and can have severe side effects. Theranostic nanoparticles, however, have the potential to revolutionize effective cancer treatment and early cancer detection. The objective of this study is to show how magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and photoluminescent gold nanoclusters (MN‐AuNCs) may be combined effectively to produce bimodal imaging nanoparticles that possess magnetic and optical properties and can be used for both magnetic resonance imaging and optical biopsy. These findings demonstrate that MN‐AuNCs, when exposed to visible light, also have the capability to produce singlet oxygen, which is necessary for photodynamic therapy of cancer. In addition, it shows that they are non‐toxic, accumulate inside the cells, and cause cell death during exposure to visible light. The creation of these MN‐AuNCs offers a novel remedy for the current shortcomings in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Since they have both therapeutic and imaging capabilities, MN‐AuNCs have the potential to improve patient outcomes while lowering the risk of negative side effects

Improvement of CZTSSe film quality and superstrate solar cell performance through optimized post-deposition annealing

Improving the performance of kesterite solar cells requires high-quality, defect-free CZTS(Se) films with a reduced number of secondary phases and impurities. Post-annealing of the CZTS films at high temperatures in a sulfur or selenium atmosphere is commonly used to improve the quality of the absorbing material. However, annealing at high-temperatures can promote material decomposition, mainly due to the loss of volatile elements such as tin or sulfur. In this work, we investigate how the additional step of sulfurization at reduced temperatures affects the quality and performance of CZTSSe based solar cells. A comprehensive structural analysis using conventional and high resolution XRD as well as Raman spectroscopy revealed that the highest CZTSSe material quality with the lowest structural disorder and defect densities was obtained from the CZTS films pre-sulfurized at 420 °C. Furthermore, we demonstrate the possibility of using Sb 2 Se 3 as a buffer layer in the superstrate configuration of CZTSSe solar cells, which is possible alternative to replace commonly employed toxic CdS as a buffer layer. We show that the additional low-temperature selenization process and the successful use of Sb 2 Se 3 as a buffer layer could improve the performance of CZTSSe-based solar cells by up to 3.48%, with an average efficiency of 3.1%