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Photoanode is an essential part in dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC). Semiconductor materials, such as TiO2, ZnO, and SnO2, are commonly used as photoanode material. In this study, DSSC photoanode was fabricated using TiO2 obtained from Bangka ilmenite concentrate by caustic fusion method followed by water leaching, acid leaching, and sol-gel reactions. The synthesized TiO2 powder has an anatase phase with a crystal size of 9.55 nm, band gap energy of 3.0 eV, spherical morphology with an average particle size of 0.53 μm, and a specific area of 138.39 m2/g. The synthesized TiO2 powder was found to have Fe impurities. The DSSC with TiO2 photoanode synthesized in this work produced current-voltage characteristics with photoconversion efficiency of 0.75%.

In this work, coconut shell was used as raw material to. Dried coconut shells were burned in a close compartment to form coconut charcoal. The dried carbon was further washed with hot distilled water to obtain a pH 7 and was dried again in an oven at 100 °C for 12 hours. The carbon was further pyrolyzed at two temperature variations, i.e. at 400 °C and 1400 °C, under argon environment for two hours before being cooled to room temperature and ready for characterization. The X-ray diffraction result showed that there are two prominent peaks centred around 2θ 25° and 43°, whereas the scanning electron microscopy result showed the flakes microstructure with long range size variation. The energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy showed that the composition of sample pyrolyzed at 400° C has 59-85 % carbon 7-37 % oxygen and 0.02-0.93 other elements (Si, P, Cl, K, Ti and Ni), whereas the sample pyrolyzed at 1400 °C has 88-92 % carbon, 7.8-11.7 % oxygen and 0.01-0.4 % other elements. This result showed that the coconut shell has the potential to be used as a cheap raw material for synthesizing nanocarbon using a simple method.

The effect of Zn substitution to the Cu-spin fluctuation in Eu1.85Ce0.15Cu1-yZnyO4+α-δ with y = 0, 0.01, 0.02, and 0.05 has been studied from zero-field (ZF) muon-spin-relaxation (μSR) measurements to understand Zn-induced magnetic state in electron-doped high-Tc superconducting cuprates. It was found that the Cu-spin correlation was developed through Zn substitution. These results were similar to the results of ZF-SR measurements in the holedoped cuprates La2-x Sr x Cu1-y Zn y O4, leading to the view electron-hole doping symmetry in high-Tc superconductors.