Semiconductors, inorganic

Photovoltaic Devices. For many inorganic semiconductors, absorption of light can be used to create free electrons and holes. In an organic semiconducting soHd, however, absorption of a photon leads to the formation of a bound electron—hole pair. Separation of this pair in an electric field can... 

Photoconductive polymers are widely used in the imaging industry as either photosensitive receptors or carrier (electron or hole) transporting materials in copy machines and laser printers. This is still the only area in which the photoelectronic properties of polymers are exploited on a large-scale industrial basis. It is also one electronic appHcation where polymers are superior to inorganic semiconductors. 

The apphcation of a high electric field across a thin conjugated polymer film has shown the materials to be electroluminescent (216—218). Until recentiy the development of electroluminescent displays has been confined to the use of inorganic semiconductors and a limited number of small molecule dyes as the emitter materials. Expansion to the broad array of conjugated polymers available gives advantages in control of emission frequency (color) and facihty in device fabrication as a result of the ease of processibiUty of soluble polymers (see Chromogenic materials,electrochromic). 

More recently. Gamier and coworkers used a printing technique to make OFETs on polymeric substrates [61]. Although printable field-effect transistors based on inorganic semiconductors have been reported as early as 1967 ]62], they did not come to any commercial development. We note, however, that in Gar-nier s device only the electrodes were actually printed. 

The interest of physicists in the conducting polymers, their properties and applications, has been focused on dry materials 93-94 Most of the discussions center on the conductivity of the polymers and the nature of the carriers. The current knowledge is not clear because the conducting polymers exhibit a number of metallic properties, i.e., temperature-independent behavior of a linear relation between thermopower and temperature, and a free carrier absorption typical of a metal. Nevertheless, the conductivity of these specimens is quite low (about 1 S cm"1), and increases when the temperature rises, as in semiconductors. However, polymers are not semiconductors because in inorganic semiconductors, the dopant substitutes for the host atomic sites. In conducting polymers, the dopants are not substitutional, they are part of a nonstoichiometric compound, the composition of which changes from zero up to 40-50% in... 

Polo and Murakami Iha used anthocyanins extracted from jaboticaba (Myrciaria cauliflora Mart) and calafate (Berberis buxifolia Lam) as dyes for DSSCs. [46] The interaction between the dye molecules and Ti02 was identified by comparing the visible absorption spectra of the bare dye in solution with those acquired after dye absorption on the semiconductor a 15 nm red shift indicated the anchorage of the anthocyanin molecules on the Ti02 nanoparticles. The inorganic semiconductor layer was deposited on ITO and the electrolyte employed was I /I3 dissolved in acetonitrile. The photovoltaic cell obtained with the jaboticaba extract gave an IPCE value of 0.2 with a short-circuit current (/sc) of 7.2 mAcm 2, a Voc of 0.5 V and a fill factor of 54%. 

This review will deal only with NMR of crystalline inorganic semiconductors, excluding the limited number of studies of amorphous or even liquid semiconductors. Unlike NMR in metals, which has been the subject of extensive reviews [8,9] and even books [10], no broad review of the NMR of semiconductors exists, although there are more specialized reviews in narrower areas [5, 6, 11-13]. Part of the reason may have to do with something of a bifurcation in experimental... 

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