Spectrum solar

Gr. helios, the sun). Janssen obtained the first evidence of helium during the solar eclipse of 1868 when he detected a new line in the solar spectrum. Lockyer and Frankland suggested the name helium for the new element. In 1895 Ramsay discovered helium in the uranium mineral clevite while it was independently discovered in cleveite by the Swedish chemists Cleve and Langlet at about the same time. Rutherford and Royds in 1907 demonstrated that alpha particles are helium nuclei. 

Sodium is present in fair abundance in the sun and stars. The D lines of sodium are among the most prominent in the solar spectrum. Sodium is the fourth most abundant element on earth, comprising about 2.6% of the earth s crust it is the most abundant of the alkali group of metals. 

In 1817, Josef Fraunhofer (1787-1826) studied the spectrum of solar radiation, observing a continuous spectrum with numerous dark lines. Fraunhofer labeled the most prominent of the dark lines with letters. In 1859, Gustav Kirchhoff (1824-1887) showed that the D line in the solar spectrum was due to the absorption of solar radiation by sodium atoms. The wavelength of the sodium D line is 589 nm. What are the frequency and the wavenumber for this line ... 

The solar spectrum is, of course, as well studied as our planetary atmosphere will permit. More information will be forthcoming as spectra from man-made satellites are recorded above the atmosphere. At this time, the spectra of many diatomic molecules have been detected. These are not the familiar, chemically stable molecules we find on the stockroom shelf. These are the molecules that are stable on a solar stockroom shelf. Figure 25-3 shows some of these and the location in the periodic table of the elements represented. 

As evidence that this is so, consider that the element helium was detected in the sun before it was found on earth Though oxygen contains 0.2% of the oxygen-18 isotope on earth, it, too, was first detected in a solar spectrum. Two... 

Luminescence measurements on proteins occupy a large part of the biochemical literature. In what surely was one of the earliest scientific reports of protein photoluminescence uncomplicated by concurrent insect or microorganism luminescence, Beccari (64), in 1746, detected a visible blue phosphorescence from chilled hands when they were brought into a dark room after exposure to sunlight. Stokes (10) remarked that the dark (ultraviolet) portion of the solar spectrum was most efficient in generating fluorescent emission and identified fluorescence from animal matter in 1852. In general, intrinsic protein fluorescence predominantly occurs between 300 nm and 400 nm and is very difficult to detect visually. The first... 

Room-temperature fluorescence (RTF) has been used to determine the emission characteristics of a wide variety of materials relative to the wavelengths of several Fraunhofer lines. Fraunhofer lines are bands of reduced intensity in the solar spectrum caused by the selective absorption of light by gaseous elements in the solar atmosphere. RTF studies have recently included the search for the causes of the luminescence of materials and a compilation of information that will lead to "luminescence signatures" for these materials. For this purpose, excitation-emission matrix (EEM) data are now being collected. 

Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) (I), an occasional contaminant in 2,4,5-T and other trichlorophenol derivatives, is the most toxic of the commonly-encountered dioxins (8) and it received most of our attention. Its low solubility in common solvents and water (ca. 2 ppb) limited our experiments since the products were difficult to identify by the conventional techniques of organic chemistry. However, TCDD has an absorption maximum at 307 nm in methanol—well within the solar spectrum observed at the earth s surface and near the region of maximum intensity (310-330 nm) of the UV lamps used in previous experiments (H 29). 

The photochemical activity of pure Ti02 has been invesli ted extensively for decades, and it has been revealed that the primary limitation is poor solar spectrum photon absorption because of its wide band gap. Recently, it has been reported that narrowing band p,p can be achieved by doping TO2 with other elements such as nitrogen[7], sulfiir, caibon, etc. For example, fliara et al.[8] reported nitrogen doping shifts the absorption band as well as narrows the band gap. 

In this Chart, the individual semi-conducting layers are presented as well as the portion of the solar spectrum each one is supposed to absorb. Obviously, if each layer is not transparent, then part of the Sun s energy is wasted. Thus, the 48% efficient of such solar cells may not be achievable. 

Cole, J.R. and Halas, N.J. (2006) Optimized plasmonic nanopartide distributions for solar spectrum harvesting. Applied Physics Letters, 89, 153120. 

The short circuit current is the product of the photon flux (A.) of the incident solar spectrum and the wavelength-dependent spectral response or collection efficiency Q( k) integrated over all wavelengths 7sc = / k)Q k)dX (see Fig. 61b). The collection efficiency is about 80% between 450 and 600 nm, demonstrating that there is little loss due to recombination (the i-layer is of device quality). The decreasing collection efficiency at the red side is due to the decreasing absorption coefficient of a-Si H. In the blue, the decreasing collection efficiency is due to absorption in the /7-layer and/or buffer layer. 

The band-gap excitation of semiconductor electrodes brings two practical problems for photoelectrochemical solar energy conversion (1) Most of the useful semiconductors have relatively wide band gaps, hence they can be excited only by ultraviolet radiation, whose proportion in the solar spectrum is rather low. (2) the photogenerated minority charge carriers in these semiconductors possess a high oxidative or reductive power to cause a rapid photocorrosion. 

The solar spectrum corresponds roughly to the radiation of a black body at the temperature 5750 K. If we denote the photon flux in the wavelength interval from A to (A 4- dA) (in photons/m2 s) as /(A), the total solar power flux (in W/m2) is given as ... 

The rate of photolytic transformations in aquatic systems also depends on the intensity and spectral distribution of light in the medium (24). Light intensity decreases exponentially with depth. This fact, known as the Beer-Lambert law, can be stated mathematically as d(Eo)/dZ = -K(Eo), where Eo = photon scalar irradiance (photons/cm2/sec), Z = depth (m), and K = diffuse attenuation coefficient for irradiance (/m). The product of light intensity, chemical absorptivity, and reaction quantum yield, when integrated across the solar spectrum, yields a pseudo-first-order photochemical transformation rate constant. 

ZnO photocatalyst can also be coupled with other materials in order to improve its chemical and physical properties [183] and photocatalytic activity [184]. Nanosized ZnO was immobilized on aluminum foil for the degradation of phenol [185]. Lanthanum and ZnO were combined to degrade 2,4,6-trichlorophenol [186]. Compared with Ti02 nanomaterial, ZnO nanomaterial generally absorbs a significant amount of the solar spectrum in the visible range therefore, ZnO nanomaterials were combined with Ti02 nanomaterials used as a photocatalyst [187]. 

The sensitizers display a crucial role in harvesting of sunlight. To trap solar radiation efficiently in the visible and the near IR region of the solar spectrum requires engineering of sensitizers at a molecular level (see Section 9.16.3).26 The electrochemical and photophysical properties of the ground and the excited states of the sensitizer have a significant influence on the charge transfer (CT) dynamics at the semiconductor interface (see Section 9.16.4). The open-circuit potential of the cell depends on the redox couple, which shuttles between the sensitizer and the counter electrode (for details see Section 9.16.5). 

---