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The preferred (002) orientation Zinc oxide ( ZnO ) nanocrystalline thin films have been deposited on ITO-coated glass substrates by means of sol-gel spin-coating technology and rapid thermal annealing for use in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The effects of annealing temperature (400 ~ 700 ° C ) on the microstructure and morphology of ZnO thin films were studied. With the increase of heating temperature from 400 °C to 700 °C, the grain size of ZnO thin films decreases from 80 to 10 nm. The decreases in grain size of ZnO thin films contributed to the improvement on the absorption of dye onto the films. The ITO/ZnO/RuL 2 (NCS) 2 electrodes with high absorption in the wide range containing visible light reveal that the nanoporous structure can adsorb easily the dye and can be expected in the application of DSSC.

Polycrystalline single phase oxides, La 0.7-x Nd x Pb 0.3) MnO 3 (0.3≤x≤0.7), have been synthesized by a standard ceramic fabrication method. A phenomenological model is proposed to describe the magnetization process, and to fit the experiment data of hysteresis loops under different composition ratio. The magnetic hysteresis behavior can be modeled by the formula of [Formula: see text]. The resulted model can satisfy the experiment data ranging from 0.005T to 5T. Explanations on the fitting coefficients of these compounds are addressed.

LiTaO 3 thin films were deposited on Pt / Ti / SiO 2/ Si substrates by means of a sol-gel spin-coating technology and rapid thermal annealing (RTA). The influence of various annealing treatments on the characteristics of the thin films were studied by varying the single-annealed-layer thickness (50 ~ 200 nm ) and heating temperatures (500 ~ 800° C ) of the samples. Experimental results reveal that the single-annealed-layer strongly influences grain size, dielectricity and ferroelectricity of LiTaO 3 thin films. The grain size of LiTaO 3 thin film decreases slightly with increasing thickness of the single-annealed-layer, and highly c-axis orientated LiTaO 3 films can be obtained for a single-annealed-layer of 50 nm. When the thickness of the single-annealed-layer was increased from 50 to 200 nm, the relative dielectric constant of LiTaO 3 thin film decreased from 65 to 35, but the dielectric loss factor (tanδ) was increased. The LiTaO 3 films with the single-annealed-layer of 50 nm showed excellent ferroelectric properties in terms of a remanent polarization ( P r) of 12.3 μ C /cm2 (Ec ∼ 60 kV/cm), and a low current density of 5.2×l0-8 A /cm2 at 20 kV/cm.

Niobium-substituted BiFeO 3( BiFe 1-x Nb x O 3 BFNO ) thin films were successfully deposited on Pt(111)/Ti/SiO2/Si(100) substrates by spin coating with a sol–gel technology and rapid thermal annealing. The effects of Nb content (x = 0~0.08) on the microstructure, magnetic and multiferroic properties of thin films were investigated. The result of X-ray diffraction analysis shows that the BFNO thin films have rhombohedral (R3c) to tetragonal (P4mm) phase transition at x = 0.06. The Nb doping in the B-site of BiFeO 3 could induce the appearance of the spontaneous magnetization and polarization by the phase transition of rhombohedral-to-tetragonal. The BFNO thin films with x = 0.06 exhibits the maximum remanent magnetization (2Mr) of 5.2 emu/g.

La -doped and Cu -doped ZnO nanowires have been prepared to compare the substitution effect on the microstructural and magnetic properties. The XRD patterns of both compositions with single diffraction peak (002) show the same wurtzite hexagonal structure. The growth rate of the ZnO nanowires were enhanced by Cu doping, which were different from the suppression of growth rate by La doping. Room temperature ferromagnetism is observed for all ZnO , Cu -doped ZnO and La -doped ZnO nanowires. The saturation magnetizations are 0.102, 0.232 and 0.04 emu/g for ZnO , Cu -doped ZnO and La -doped ZnO nanowires, respectively. The results showed that the ferromagnetism is restrained by Cu doping, but enhanced by the La doping.