14^th International Conference on Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology March 30- 31, 2017 Madrid, Spain

Sara Chahid is a PhD student and has expertise in synthesis and characterization of doped TiO2 nanoparticles and study of these nanomaterials in photovoltaic and photocatalytic applications.

Photovoltaic is a promising alternative renewable energy that utilizes sunlight energy to obtain electricity which has pronounced to solve the future energy problem faces worldwide.1, 2 Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is one of leading technology in the photovoltaic field,3 due to their environmental friendliness and cost-effective alternative to silicon solar cells.4 In the present work, DSSC based on Cu-doped TiO2 semiconductor were performed. A study about the effect of Cu on structural and optical properties of TiO2 nanoparticles synthesized and their influence on photovoltaic properties was carried out.\r\nExperimental: Cu-doped TiO2 samples were synthesized using a low temperature hydrolysis reaction to produced pure, 1.0% and 5.5% Cu-doped TiO2 and annealed at 500oC.5 Doctor blade method was used to build DSSCs based on Cu-doped TiO2 nanoparticles. The Cu-doped TiO2 semiconductor was characterised with several tools such as XRD, ICP-AES, Raman and UV-Vis spectroscopy in order to study its physical and electronic properties. Finally, an analysis of the I-V characterization was carried out to investigate the effect of Cu-doped on DSSCs performed.\r\nResults and discussion: Anatase TiO2 was the predominant phase in samples under study. Electronic as well as optical properties of the pure and Cu-doped TiO2 also were analysed. A decrease in band gap energy for Cu-doped TiO2 was detected. Moreover, the photovoltaic performance of the solar cells was carried out and an improvement of open circuit voltage (Voc) and the efficiency () of the cells based on Cu-doped TiO2 compared with undoped TiO2 were observed.\r\nConclusion: The obtained results may be useful to understand the influence of structural, optical and electronic properties of TiO2 doped with Cu on their improved photovoltaic activity.\r\nAcknowledgements\r\nWe thank to the Junta de Andalucía of Spain under projects P09- FQM-04938 and ENE2014-58085-R, and FEDER funds. We\r\ngratefully acknowledge the Science and Technology Center of University of Cádiz for the supplied equipment.\r\n

J. Jiménez-López is developing her PhD since 2014 at University of Jaén (Spain). She has published seven papers in reputed journals.

A high sensitivity in the analysis of biological components and drugs is essential to be able to plainly determine the behavior of these and their different actions in the human body. For this reason, it is been developed a potential and sensitive detection method based on the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) system between mercaptopropionic acid (MPA)-capped CdTe quantum dots (QDs) and cysteamine (CS)-capped Au nanoparticles. Acting as energy donors, CdTe QDs and Au nanoparticles as energy acceptors, in our system is produced the modulation in FRET efficiency between QDs and AuNPs in the presence of a target analytes like captopril, L- cysteine, glutathione, etc, which inhibits the interaction of the QD-AuNP assembly. Depending of the target analyte, the interaction could be either with MPA-capped CdTe QDs or CS-capped Au nanoparticles, enabling the measurement of the magnitude of this interaction and how it affects the FRET system.\r\nAs a result, rapid, simple and novel methods of analysis based on that fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) in combination with quantum dots (QDs) and their unique properties is being designing, providing new and improved sensors for the determination of relevant analytes.\r\n