Review of atomic layer deposition of nanostructured solar cells

Abstract : This study reviews atomic layer deposition technique with a special interest on solar cells applications. Atomic layer deposition is a vapour phase deposition technique used for producing thin films for several applications. This review focuses on the chemistry of Atomic Layer Deposition of solar cells, merits and demerits of ALD on thin film solar cells. Solar cells have attracted a lot of interest due to their potential for affordable, clean and sustainable energy. Solar cells can be deposited using different deposition techniques but Atomic layer deposition currently attracts attention owing to the merits. ALD has functional merit to bulk materials, great processing flexibility and affordability. The review examined the merits of ALD and solar cells and areas for future study. It offers affordability, ease of control of film growth, conformal and improvement on the deposition of solar cells. Despite few demerits, ALD is poised to be the deposition technique of choice for modifying interfaces of the film for improved performance

Investigation on laser beam machining of miniature gears

Abstract: Micro‐machining has become a fast growing field in the global manufacturing sector due to increasing demand of miniature machines and devices. The trend involves the fabrication of precision miniature parts that have widespread applications in many areas such as, electronics, biomedical, aerospace, robotics, automobiles and consumer products. Miniature gears are essential components of miniaturised devices such as miniature motors and pumps, scientific instruments, medical equipment, timing devices, and robots etc. These gears are generally fine‐pitched gears running at very high speed, mainly used for transmission of motion and/or torque. Therefore, minimum running noise, accurate motion transfer and long service life are the required qualities of these gears. Considering that a laser beam is capable of cutting complex shapes with great precision and little waste, motivates its use to machine small sized parts including miniature gears. This article reports on the fabrication of stainless steel miniature gears by laser beam machining (LBM) process. A total of twenty experiments have been conducted following one factor at a time design of experiment strategy on CO2 laser machine. The fabricated gears have 9 mm pitch diameter, 10 teeth, and 4.5 mm thickness. The effects of laser machining parameters on surface roughness (mainly average roughness ‘Ra’ and mean roughness depth ‘Rz’) of gears have been analysed. The best quality miniature gear fabricated by LBM possesses 1.04 μm average roughness and 5.797 μm mean roughness depth at par with that obtained by conventional and other advanced processes of miniature gear manufacturing. Investigation reveals that LBM is capable to produce miniature gears of good surface finish and integrity ensuring their high functional performance and long service life. The outputs of this preliminary work encourage further exploration of LBM to establish it as an alternative process for fabrication of precision miniature gears

On the Miura map between the dispersionless KP and dispersionless modified KP hierarchies

We investigate the Miura map between the dispersionless KP and dispersionless modified KP hierarchies. We show that the Miura map is canonical with respect to their bi-Hamiltonian structures. Moreover, inspired by the works of Takasaki and Takebe, the twistor construction of solution structure for the dispersionless modified KP hierarchy is given.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, no figure